Adding a lobby-level Caffe Strega by restaurant operator Varano Group is the latest makeover evident at 177 Huntington Ave. as Boston-based Beacon Capital Partners modernizes the 26-story office tower for the next generation of tenants.

Online furniture retailer Wayfair will vacate 95,000 square feet on the 12 top floors when it moves to Copley Place at the end of June. Northeastern University, which has 90,000 square feet of offices on 12 floors, will remain.

Beacon Capital acquired the ground lease for 177 Huntington in 2012 for $59 million from the First Church of Christ, Scientist. Since then, it’s spent $5 million upgrading common areas, said Duncan Gratton, a principal with Cassidy Turley, which is handling the leasing activity.

“We wanted to energize the lobby and have a place where people could spend time informally,” Gratton said this week. “We didn’t want it to be a waystation on the way to the elevator and a pass-through to the parking garage.”

To reposition 177 Huntington for new tenants, Beacon installed new art and signs and LED news strips in the elevator bays. On Monday, Varano Group will open a Caffe Strega breakfast and lunch cafe in the lobby. The owners wanted a name-brand restaurant operator to set the lobby apart, Gratton said.

With its narrow profile and smaller-than-typical 8,000-square-foot floor plates, the building is ideal for small and medium-sized tenants who can occupy an entire floor, Gratton said. Three tenants are close to finalizing deals for a total of five floors, he said.

The 39-year-old tower was designed by I.M. Pei & Partners and Araldo A. Cassutta, Associated Architects and used for the bulk of its history as church offices. The offices moved in 2008 to the Christian Science Publishing House as part of the Christian Science Plaza revitalization. That project encompasses one of the city’s largest development projects, Cambridge-based Carpenter & Co.’s 950,000-square-foot hotel and residential community which could break ground by year’s end.

-STEVE ADAMS