Overview
- Embrace Boston announced Wednesday that it acquired 33 and 41 West Street in Downtown Crossing and will combine the two properties into about 35,000 square feet of civic and cultural space just steps from The Embrace monument on Boston Common.
- The organization plans street-level rotating art installations, flexible event and convening space, a café, a podcast studio and media/production rooms while keeping upper floors leased to existing commercial tenants.
- Longtime donors helped fund the purchase alongside financing from Eastern Bank and pro bono legal work from Morrison Foerster and Goodwin Procter, but Embrace still needs to raise further capital for design, renovation and full buildout.
- Embrace intends to begin limited public programming in an unoccupied portion of the site this fall, to issue a national open call for a facade commission this coming fall, and to target a full opening by Boston’s 400th anniversary in 2030.
- The move follows the city’s cancellation of a planned Parcel 3 development in Roxbury and does not end Embrace’s stated effort to secure a presence in Roxbury as it uses the downtown site to extend its work on monuments, public space and civic inclusion.