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Teele Square hotel at the Pit

Updated November 10, 2026

What's happening

The Zoning Board of Appeals has postponed its November 4 deliberation on the eight-story, 99-room Hilton hotel planned for the Teele Square "Pit." Ward 7 Councilor Emily Hardt wrote in her November 3 newsletter that the case will come up at a later ZBA meeting, with no new date yet, and that the board is still accepting written comments. The ZBA heard the project on September 30 and continued it without a vote. The postponed session was set for deliberation only, with no public comment, according to Hardt's October 26 newsletter and the city's meeting page. Comments had been due October 29 before the delay. The board wanted a staff report first, and it has to work out how a July 31 change in state law affects which of the ten variances still apply. The Pit is the fenced hole at 1154 Broadway, empty since an October 29, 2011 fire.

The September hearing ran while the same owners' other building in the square was burning. Four weeks later, half of that building is back. The five-alarm fire at 1137 to 1147 Broadway (also listed as 1135) displaced 43 residents. The east side took only smoke damage, and its residents and businesses have returned. Hardt wrote that Al Aswad Dental, Teele Square Liquors and Masala are open, and the laundry and tailoring shop is working out of Chris Fine Tailors at 1169 Broadway. Cleaning up and rebuilding the west side "will take awhile." Hardt said she is working with the owner to speed up reconstruction. She and Ward 1 Councilor Matt McLaughlin sponsored a resolution asking city staff to support small businesses recently hit by fires. Investigators believe the fire was electrical and began in a third-floor ceiling. The fire department's report calls the cause officially undetermined but most likely electrical (Tufts Daily, Oct 19).

Contractors have filed for the gut work (city permit data):

  • 1147 Broadway: on October 2 Tradition Construction applied for a building permit to remove walls, ceilings, flooring and part of the roof structure "due [to] major fire," at an estimated $110,000. The October 8 permit capture shows no change, so the application was still listed as received, not issued.
  • 1133 Broadway: on October 1 Action Emergency Management applied to board up the property "post fire damage."

The west side faces "a big construction project, rebuilding or gutting and renovating from the inside." Teele Square Laundromat's ceiling collapsed under firefighting water. Owner Moses Kye says his insurance coverage is low and the city hasn't offered him direct help. He also doubts the landlord's estimate of three or four months to reopen the ground floor: "customers who have experienced fires before tell me it will take at least a year." Happy Crab is also closed.

The city opened an Emergency Displacement Fund with the Somerville Homeless Coalition on October 1 (city). Emergency Management Director William Fisher said the city was deciding whether to activate its fire fund for more aid on top of that. An insurance adjuster for owner-developer Binoj Pradhan had predicted a year of shutdown and reconstruction (Independent, Oct 1).

The story

The Pit and the fire

The 2011 fire destroyed the Teele Square Laundromat, a nail salon, the Kee Kar Laue restaurant and the West Somerville police substation. It started at Hawk Cleaners and was ruled accidental, cause undetermined. The lot has been empty ever since. The Pradhans own both the Pit and the building that burned September 30. That building was finished in 1912 as "The Cliff" and has been in the family since 1988 (Independent, Sept 30). Registry records cited by Cambridge Day show Laxmi and Jharana Pradhan, as trustees of the Shree Ganesh Realty Trust, buying it for $4.5 million in 2005. The city assessed it at about $3.1 million for fiscal 2026. Pradhan also owns the Masala restaurant downstairs.

The fire ran through the cockloft between the third-floor ceilings and the roof. Fire Chief Charles Breen said the century-old dry wood let it spread fast (Cambridge Day, Oct 2). Everyone got out, and several firefighters had minor injuries. Pradhan skipped the ZBA hearing that night; his attorney, Adam Dash, said the owners were dealing with the fire. The hotel's supporters quickly made the obvious argument. "We are about to have another vacancy in Teele Square after the tragedy tonight," resident Matthew West told the board.

Why eight stories

A six-story, 75-room hotel was approved for the site in 2018 and extended in 2020. That approval has expired. Pradhan came back in 2025 with the current design: dining at street level and on the roof, and a 35-car underground valet garage. Then the project went quiet for about a year, which Hardt says "left many people asking, 'What is happening with the Pit?'"

Dash argues the site only works with a bigger building. Strict zoning allows about four stories in the Mid-Rise 4 (MR4) district. Inflation and newer energy and zoning rules, he said, mean a six-story hotel can no longer pay for the cleanup: "A viable hotel must be large enough to pay for the likely environmental cleanup… Something has to give for The Pit to be redeveloped."

Nobody knows how contaminated the site is. Dash said it was last tested in 2015 by a prospective buyer who backed out and didn't share the results. Pradhan won't test, and take on the liability, until he has an approved project that could cover the bill. Dash called it "a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem."

The other variances follow from the design. The restaurants need gas, said architect Will Chalfant of Khalsa Design. That triggers the energy code's on-site renewables rule for high-rises, so solar panels would cover the roof and leave no room for a green roof. Soil over the garage would be too shallow for more than a couple of trees, so the project also fails its GreenScore. The garage would also turn part of one-way Clarendon Avenue two-way.

The ten variances

The agenda lists ten variances, all in MR4 (agenda). Seven were filed together as ZP26-000026 to -032:

  • GreenScore
  • landscape buffer
  • height
  • number of stories
  • rear setback
  • secondary front setback
  • a driveway in the frontage area

Three came later as ZP26-000077 to -079: sidewalk width and two curb-cut rules.

The agenda calls these "hardship" variances. Dash told the board that since July 31, state law has replaced the hardship test with a lower "practical difficulty" standard. He argued that most objections no longer count: "Not design, not traffic backups, not two-way streets." He added, "If this wasn't difficult to develop, it would have been developed years ago." Our sources have only Dash's description of the change.

Who's where

The split is between people who want anything at all in the hole and people wary of ten variances justified by cleanup costs nobody has measured. "We all want success. Something needs to happen in this Pit," said ZBA Vice Chair Anne Brockelman.

  • Hardt supports the project. She told the board in September that "eight stories is not unreasonable for this lot." Her October newsletter adds that a hotel near Tufts, the T and the airport "will do well" and bring in commercial tax revenue "which we sorely need."
  • Resident Melissa McWhinney said "developers keep sort of sliding out from under green roof requirements."
  • Some neighbors remembered two-way traffic on Clarendon causing trouble the last time it was tried.

Height is the main question, and Davis Square, a mile away, faces the same one as its neighborhood plan works out how tall residential buildings can go (Davis Square: the plan and the tower that didn't happen). The ZBA is also short a member; the Planning Division says applications for the seat are open until November 30 (Before the boards).

What's next

  • A rescheduled ZBA date: the deliberation on the ten variances, postponed from November 4, has no new date in our sources. Hardt says she will announce it, and written comments are still being accepted. See Before the boards.
  • November 30, 2026: applications close for the vacant ZBA seat, per the Planning Division.
  • The burned building: three things are still open (outcomes not in our sources yet):

- the permits for the 1147 Broadway gut work and the 1133 Broadway board-up - the city's decision on the fire fund - the Hardt–McLaughlin small-business resolution

For the west side, the only timeline is the landlord's three-to-four-month target for reopening the ground floor.

  • If the variances are granted: site plan approval and design review come next, along with the contamination testing Pradhan has put off. Ten variances leave abutters plenty of grounds to appeal.
  • If they're denied: the Pit stays a pit unless the owner comes back with something that fits MR4.