New FBI Headquarters | Everett Avenue | Chelsea

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Case closed: Chelsea beats Boston for new FBI headquarters

By Thomas Grillo
Friday, December 3, 2010 - Updated 43 minutes ago

Chelsea has outgunned Boston to be the home of the FBI?s new, $200 million headquarters.

The U.S. General Services Administration has picked ACS Development to build a 250,000-square-foot facility for the G-Men on a 5-acre ?urban renewal? site on Everett Avenue.

The Chelsea developer beat Pappas Enterprises, which was vying to get the command center on a parcel it owns near the Boston Athletic Club on Summer Street in South Boston.


?This is another tremendous accomplishment in a long line of great success stories in our urban renewal district,? said Chelsea City Manager Jay Ash told the Herald.

?The ACS proposal was competitive from a cost perspective, the design elements were well received and the site met the high security concerns that face any federal facility built in this post-9/11 world,? he said.

ACS is a commercial real estate development company owned by the Simboli family.

An FBI spokesman in Boston would not confirm or deny that the GSA had decided on Chelsea for the project. The headquarters are currently located at One Center Plaza in Boston?s Government Center.

Chelsea had been seen as the underdog, in part because building a headquarters outside a capital city would be a departure for a federal agency. And Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino had lobbied hard to keep the FBI in the Hub.

The GSA issued request for proposals in 2007. In addition to ACS and Pappas, National Development had been bidding to build the FBI building at the Boston Herald?s property at 300 Harrison Ave.

http://www.bostonherald.com/busines..._new_fbi_headquarters/srvc=home&position=also
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

That's okay, Chelsea will be annexed into Boston some day.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

from an economic standpoint it sucks, but from an urban standpoint its probably a good thing, as the FBI building is very anti-urban. Blank street wall, surrounded by security barrier etc...

someone please correct me if i am wrong though, as I think got this line of thinking from a previous thread on this a year or so back.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

BostonUrbEx said:
That's okay, Chelsea will be annexed into Boston some day.
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That could happen, either way, this is good for Chelsea. Next thing they need is better transit.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

palindrome said:
from an economic standpoint it sucks, but from an urban standpoint its probably a good thing, as the FBI building is very anti-urban. Blank street wall, surrounded by security barrier etc...
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This was my first thought as well. Federal building in general (at least of late) seem to be very anti-urban.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

Wonder how the FBI employees are going to like being over there. Like you said it's an indsutrial no mans land.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

Even the Feds have figured out that Boston is too expensive and overcomplicated to build in today.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

Is Pappas actually looking to redevelop his landholdings between D Street and the channel? In all the South Boston/Waterfront development news, you rarely hear about his parcels.

Given the debacle along the waterfront, I think his parcels offer the best hope for a real residential neighborhood to develop (also providing continuity to residential Southie).
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

Arch101 said:
Even the Feds have figured out that Boston is too expensive and overcomplicated to build in today.
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This may be an example of the Boston process doing what it is meant to do. If this were Houston, Fort Point would already be changing the signs to Fort Fed and it would actually look like a fort. It is a good thing that this facility will not be built there.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

So is Detroit
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

I assume that this would be a tax exempt government building. So what is the benefit to Chelsea other than one less vacant lot in the 40 year old "urban renewal' area?
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

I'm glad this will not be built in South Boston. I still wonder why they couldn't have just taken over part of an office park in Waltham or Burlington.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

Ron Newman said:
I'm glad this will not be built in South Boston. I still wonder why they couldn't have just taken over part of an office park in Waltham or Burlington.
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They wanted a location near the Federal courthouses, which is why S. Boston was initially thought of as being a good location.

However, the FBI's insistence on having the building(s) be protected from blasts required a site with a lot of space so the building would be distant from nearby streets. Most of the potential S. Boston sites were on commercial truck routes, and that also, IMO, was a disadvantage.
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

but isn't Everett Avenue in Chelsea also a truck route?
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

FBI in Boston is a bad idea, unless you want downtown to have something like this:


atf.jpg



Of course it's also a terrible idea to build a giant government building away from transit.

Is it near the commuter rail station at least?
 
Re: FBI moving to Chelsea

Why is a government building far away from transit bad? I feel like they would all be driving pitch black SUVs with tinted windows to work, anyways.
 
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