Kendall Capital files Boston plans for 155-unit office conversion at 133 Federal St.

Kendall Capital has filed plans with the Boston Planning Department to convert 133 Federal St., a 12-story Brutalist office building in the Financial District, into 155 apartments across 155,000 square feet, with historic tax credits slated to finance the work, according to a Banker & Tradesman report cited by Connect CRE. It is an application, and the coverage does not say what the credits are worth or who would buy them.

Mai Luo, a Kendall Capital manager, bought the building from B.E. Realist LP for $15.75 million last December, public records show, a basis of about $101,600 per apartment and about $102 a square foot, two ways of stating the same figure because the filing puts 1,000 square feet behind each unit. Completed in 1960 and long known as the Blue Cross-Blue Shield Building, the property was certified as a city landmark in 2024. At $15.75 million, the purchase reads as a mark on Financial District office space, likely shaped by leases the owner can terminate rather than by a stabilized rent roll.

The unit program leans small: of the 155 apartments, 118 would be studios with rents from $2,500 to $4,500 a month, and redevelopment is anticipated to run 16 to 24 months. Studios at roughly three-quarters of the mix put the pro forma's weight on cost per unit rather than rent per square foot, and the application states that all current leases carry owner termination rights exercisable within the next 18 months, which would let the sponsor empty the building within roughly the window the construction schedule needs. Buy, terminate, build inside a standing frame, and the project never waits on a construction loan the way a ground-up site does.

Connect CRE frames Boston as a continuing hub for office conversion work, and the Federal Street filing shows the shape of that pipeline. Boston has proposed deferring $31.5 million in property taxes to start four approved projects, testing whether a deferred tax increase can move work forward when the construction loan behind it has not changed. Federal Street runs on another clock: the vacancy schedule under the leases, already ticking.

The filing stops at the basis and does not show the capital stack above it. The coverage supplies an acquisition price, a unit count and a rent range; credit pricing, hard costs and any lender terms will decide whether 133 Federal St. reaches 155 apartments or waits.