932 Arch St. has certainly experienced a strange decade. We first covered this property back in 2012, sharing the news that the one-story building would be growing by five stories, with the newly renovated building containing 20 apartments and some office space. It didn’t take long before construction got started, but for whatever reason, work froze for a couple years. We checked in on the building in 2017, and the facade of the building had been draped in a black cloth and three more stories had been framed out, leaving us with a partially constructed nine-story building. Oh, and the concept had changed dramatically, to a 168-room hotel.

Amazingly, the delays have continued for this building, and it looks more or less the same as it did three years ago. After all these additional delays, wouldn’t you know it, the plans are changing again.

The building has gone from one story to six stories to its current nine stories, and the owners are hoping to stack a little more height onto this bad boy. There’s currently a zoning application to add three more stories to the building and also to build a six-story addition on another section of the property, on 10th Street. The owners are still looking for a hotel here, but will be increasing the number of rooms to 199. More correctly, we should say this is what they want to do, as any plan will require approval from the ZBA in order to move forward.

We’re honestly surprised we haven’t seen any more information about this project in the mainstream media, as we have to think that the building will be operated by a legit hotel company. Lest you think that the project will instead be a huge Airbnb, the zoning application indicates amenities, including a restaurant that serves breakfast, a bar, a gym, and laundry facilities, all features that we’d expect in a hotel but not really in a short term rental building. Perhaps we missed something- has anyone heard anything specific about a hotel operator in this building?

Of course, given the recent history of the property, this may prove to be an academic musing. The construction actually has to be resumed and then finished for a hotel to open here. And to be honest, we’re not terribly optimistic that’s gonna happen. We’d love to be wrong on this, and we imagine that people that have been staring at this incomplete project for all these years hope we’re wrong too.