18-Acre Exchange District Clears State Hurdle to Speed Office-to-Housing Credits

An 18-acre downtown historic district approved by the Massachusetts Historical Commission is now awaiting National Park Service review — a step developers say can shorten the path to state and federal historic tax credits for office-to-residential conversions in Boston’s Financial District, Bisnow reported from the Boston Building Upgrades and Conversions Summit on Nov. 4.

The Exchange District was approved at a Sept. 9 Massachusetts Historical Commission meeting after the city’s Office of Historic Preservation drafted and advanced the nomination, Bisnow reported. Properties inside a listed historic district are already treated as eligible for the National Register process that underpins historic tax credits, reducing the time and cost of seeking an individual listing for each building.

Why the district matters for conversions

“That will make it so much easier for developers who want historic tax credits for their buildings within this district,” Dinosaur Capital Partners Managing Partner Scott Oran said at the summit, according to Bisnow. Oran’s team is converting the 11-story office building at 31 Milk Street into 110 housing units and previously pursued an individual National Register listing — a process he described as carrying its own cost, expense, time and complexity before the district existed.

Elizabeth Sherva, deputy director of the Boston Office of Historic Preservation, said at the event that the city expected better projects and “retention of a lot of the historic fabric,” Bisnow reported. She also cautioned that a district listing does not guarantee tax-credit awards: credits remain capped and competitive, and not every adaptive-reuse job is a historic-credit candidate.

Bisnow’s analysis counted at least eight conversion projects inside the district, including 31 Milk Street, 50 Congress Street and 1 State Street. State and federal historic rehabilitation tax credits can be worth up to 20% of qualified rehabilitation expenditures for developers still filling financing gaps, the outlet reported.

Data analysis: the city’s conversion program by the numbers

Since Boston’s tax-incentive program for office-to-residential conversions launched in 2023, 28 applications have been filed covering 35 buildings, with more than 2,400 housing units proposed and about 2 million square feet of former office space taken out of the market, Bisnow reported. Those figures describe applications and proposals, not completed construction; Bisnow noted that most projects in the pipeline have not yet started construction as developers assemble financing.

Source: Bisnow reporting from the Nov. 4, 2026 Boston Building Upgrades and Conversions Summit and related program figures.

Recent proposals have scaled up. Bisnow cited New York-based Vanbarton Group’s 476-unit conversion at 31 St. James Avenue and Synergy’s 258-unit project at 294 Washington Street among larger efforts. Vanbarton Project Manager Nicolas Giannone described the St. James work as closer to an interior fit-out when pitching capital, Bisnow reported.

Dorfman Capital Vice President Josh Kasten, who worked with Oran on the Milk Street capital stack, said historic-credit deals require coordination among the architect, developer, historic consultant, city, state and federal government — “a long, detailed process” before credits become a usable financing source.

What happens next

The Exchange District nomination now sits with the National Park Service for final review. Listing would not by itself approve any conversion, change zoning or award credits; it would mainly establish Register eligibility for contributing buildings so individual projects can move faster on the credit paperwork that often sits in the middle of a multi-source capital stack.

Boston’s separate office-to-residential tax incentive — which Bisnow described as offering up to a 75% property-tax abatement for 29 years under the city program — remains the other major local tool. Developers still have to clear financing, design review and construction before units open. For more on downtown real estate and housing, see our Boston business news coverage and Boston news.

City officials did not publish a fresh Office of Historic Preservation release that loaded during this report’s research window; the Massachusetts Historical Commission approval date and National Park Service handoff are drawn from Bisnow’s Nov. 4 account and from prior city announcements about the nomination advancing.

Sources

• Bisnow: Proposed historic district could make office-to-residential conversions easier to finance
• Boston Planning & Development Agency: Office to Residential Conversion Program
• Bisnow Boston Building Upgrades and Conversions Summit coverage (Nov. 4, 2026)