Opportunity in two prime urban sectors
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | December 13, 2006
Mayor Thomas M. Menino's proposal to relocate City Hall could transform downtown Boston by rebuilding one of the city's most reviled public spaces and democratizing the South Boston waterfront district, which is emerging as an exclusive neighborhood of law firms, conventioneers, and swanky restaurants.
Selling the present City Hall, which squats on a corner of nine prime acres of real estate, would offer developers an unprecedented opportunity to fill a hole in downtown. While Boston officials estimate the property could fetch $400 million, real estate executives declined to put a price tag on it because its value depends on what the city allows to be built there.
"It's enormous, and I'd hate to even speculate," said Rob Griffin , president of Cushman & Wakefield of Massachusetts Inc. "To aggregate nine acres in the center of the city like that would be unheard of."
Meantime, Menino's proposal for a modern -- and more functional -- City Hall at a dry dock on the South Boston waterfront would add a major destination to a former industrial neighborhood still unfamiliar to some city residents, and provide a contrast to the mostly high-priced properties taking root there.
The city already owns 13 acres of land at Drydock Four, southeast of the World Trade Center, which it rents to the Bank of America Pavilion concert facility. Menino said he would like to see the pavilion remain on the property after the new City Hall is built. Boston Redevelopment Authority officials yesterday estimated that selling the current City Hall property would generate enough money to finance a $300 million environmentally friendly structure that Menino predicted would be "architecturally magnificent."
Menino's administration has pushed developers to design stylish buildings, so the new City Hall is likely to look more like the glassy new Institute of Contemporary Art on the waterfront than the 1960s brick and concrete bunker it would replace.
This is the second major development initiative Menino has unveiled this year. In February, he challenged developers for proposals for a 1,000-foot tower to be built on the site of a parking garage in the Financial District that the city intends to sell. Menino yesterday appeared to trump himself with his City Hall proposal.
"I want to improve the downtown public realm -- create greater unity and beauty for our residents -- and I want to push the redevelopment of the waterfront past the tipping point," he said in a speech before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.
It certainly had an impact.
"I almost fell out of my seat," David I. Begelfer , chief executive of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties' regional chapter, said after Menino unleashed his stunning announcement at the Chamber breakfast yesterday morning. "The competition for this site will be international -- it's the most valuable piece of property in Boston, in the center of the city."
Menino did not say what should happen to the current City Hall -- whether it should be demolished, for example -- but said whatever does gets built on the site should include a mix of uses that would fill in the gaping and underused downtown space. Such a redevelopment would rejoin the Faneuil Hall Marketplace area to Beacon Hill in the same way demolition of the elevated Central Artery helped reconnect Boston Harbor to downtown.
Menino said he will start the design process for the new City Hall early next year. He did not set a timetable for selling the property, but in the meantime developers are expected to be drawing up proposals for possible replacements there.
As sizable as Menino's ambition for the current City Hall Plaza is, Kyle B. Warwick , New England regional director for the real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle, said the industry has the resources to match it.
"We're seeing an unprecedented capital flow into Boston, and the money is turning toward more 'opportunistic' transactions like land development," he said.
The value of the City Hall site, which four decades ago was part of the replacement for colorful but seedy Scollay Square, depends on how much and what could be built there. The Green Line MBTA corridor running underneath may limit development, but a proposal in 2003 to excavate part of the plaza for a parking garage was considered viable.
The current City Hall building and desert-like emptiness of the red-brick plaza outside have been widely criticized as inhospitable. In 2004, the Project for Public Spaces, a New York nonprofit, put City Hall Plaza in its "Hall of Shame," calling it "one of the most disappointing places in America."
Still, some questioned whether moving City Hall to the waterfront would bring new life to that neighborhood.
"Other than showing a dissatisfaction for City Hall where it is, I don't see a logic," said Alex Krieger , chief executive of Chan Krieger Sieniewicz , an architectural firm. Though the waterfront is "bereft of urban public life," he said, "I'm not sure people going to get their marriage licenses are going to change all that."
But Vivien Li , executive director of the Boston Harbor Association, called Menino's proposal "bold" and said she was "pleased to welcome the mayor to the part of the city that's going to be the 21st century."
After years of fits and starts, the South Boston waterfront has recently seen progress with the opening of the new ICA museum, the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, the Park Lane Seaport residences, and restaurants such as Legal Test Kitchen.
Bruce Berman of the nonprofit group Save the Harbor/Save the Bay said he started getting phone calls from people "within four minutes" of Menino's speech.
"They said this could change everything if it happens," said Berman. "What a spectacular and very public use for the harbor," he said. "City Hall during the day and the Pavilion at night."
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at
tpalmer@globe.com.
