Re: Columbus Center
Hopefully just a hiccup...
State delays subsidies for condo complex
Columbus Center deal questioned
By Andrea Estes, Globe Staff | November 14, 2007
Governor Deval Patrick's administration has delayed approval of a $20 million package of taxpayer-supported subsidies for the developers of the massive Columbus Center luxury condo complex after it discovered the project may not qualify for the funds.
The $10 million grant and a $10 million loan were to come from a pot of state money set aside by the Legislature last year to help developers upgrade publicly owned infrastructure, such as roads and water systems.
But the Columbus Center developers had planned to use the $20 million to build a deck over the Massachusetts Turnpike that they would own themselves, according to the terms of their 99-year lease with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
Because the deck would not be owned by the state, the project does not qualify for the subsidies, said the spokeswoman for the Department of Housing and Economic Development.
"The state will not sign a contract . . . where the infrastructure is owned by anybody but the public," said Kofi Jones, spokeswoman for the department. Jones suggested the delays are a technical glitch and said grants to other private projects from the same fund have also been delayed.
The money would come from a $100 million program called Massachusetts Opportunity Relocation and Expansion Jobs Capital created by the Legislature last year.
The $800 million Columbus Center will consist of a 1.45-million-square foot, six-building complex, including a 35-story hotel towering above the turnpike. For years, opponents have argued that the project is too big for the neighborhoods it will join, the Back Bay and the South End.
Alan Eisner, spokesman for Columbus Center developers Arthur Winn and Roger Cassin, said lawyers will amend the 2,500-page air rights lease to transfer ownership of the deck, the tunnels, and all other infrastructure back to the state.
"We are currently working with the Turnpike Authority to ensure that the language in the lease conforms to the requirements of the grants," Eisner said. "We are confident that the technical language will be worked out in relatively short order."
In the meantime, preliminary work has begun at the site. "We're hopeful that by the time construction has proceeded to the point where we need the money, this technical language will have been worked out," Eisner said.
While Eisner suggested the problem is more technical than substantive, critics say ownership of the project's parks and the infrastructure has been the subject of fierce debate for years.
"I'm puzzled how the state did not understand that the infrastructure was to be privately owned," said state Representative Marty Walz , of the Back Bay. "Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the project has always understood that the infrastructure is planned to be privately owned. All you have to do is read the lease."
She called the state's lapse mysterious.
This summer, House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi asked the administration to rescind the $10 million grant, calling it corporate welfare. The money in the jobs creation fund was set aside by the Legislature to expand the state's economy, not "to help a private developer build million-dollar condos," he said.
At the time Housing and Economic Development Secretary Daniel O'Connell called the award "a critical step toward groundbreaking for this long-delayed project that will reconnect two important neighborhoods in Boston and bring substantial construction and permanent jobs to the area."
The project has been championed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino and state Senator Dianne Wilkerson, a Roxbury Democrat.
Another state agency has already admitted bypassing its rules to give the project financial assistance. MassHousing, an agency whose mission is to promote the building of affordable housing, agreed to lend Columbus Center $21 million from a fund earmarked for affordable rental units only, not luxury condos. Last summer MassHousing officials defended the award, calling Columbus Center a worthy project and "a rare opportunity to transform the landscape of downtown Boston."
Source:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/11/14/state_delays_subsidies_for_condo_complex/
