Fibbies will have to spend plenty for ?fortress? Hub office complex
By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
The FBI?s prowess in nabbing assorted criminals and even gangsters (Whitey Bulger excepted) is well known.
But the bureau?s search for a new Hub headquarters makes one wonder whether the federal crime fighters have been paying much attention to the world just outside their downtown Boston offices.
Currently a tenant in rented offices, the FBI wants to build its own fortress somewhere in or near the city?s tower district.
In Detroit, no problem. But in Boston, which boasts some of the most expensive real estate on the planet, the FBI?s dream headquarters could prove to be very costly.
How costly? Anywhere from $150 million to $300 million, according to estimates by local real estate executives.
?They will be paying a premium for the kind of land this would require, but it buys them the kind of security (they want), which is priceless,? said David Begelfer, head of the local chapter of the National Assocation of Industrial and Office Properties. ?Certainly it?s going to be expensive.?
On the FBI?s wish list: A free-standing, 270,000-square-foot bunker, with 100-foot setbacks from the curb.
The complex could need anywhere from five to 10 acres, giving it a footprint roughly the size of Fenway Park [map].
That kind of big-government dreaming comes amid a historic run-up in Boston commercial property and land prices.
Hub land prices have skyrocketed, especially along South Boston?s waterfront, an area that has the only large tracts of available land near downtown Boston.
Here?s an inkling of what the FBI is up against if it wants to build near Pier 4 and the new federal courthouse.
Waterfront developer Joseph Fallon bought the Fan Pier development site for $115 million in 2005, while an investment group led by Boston tower builder John Hynes spent $200 million for a 24-acre swath of parking lots across the street. That?s just for the land, with construction plans to build out both sites easily running into the billions.
Another option would be to simply move to a more secure - and already built - high-rise in Boston, like the ultra-secure Federal Reserve tower, which rents out a third of its roughly 1 million square feet to other tenants.
Or how about simply moving out to Route 128 and retrofitting a corporate complex there? Not cheap, but a lot less expensive than building in downtown Boston.
Such common sense ideas don?t necessarily make sense in Washington, D.C., where the shots on this deal will be ultimately called.
Moving to the ?burbs would move jobs out of the city and anger some of the local pols.
That would require nothing short of a special dispensation from the local congressmen, I?m told.
sbvanvoorhis@bostonherald.com
