Widett Circle Development, so it begins.

[stellarfun]

Developer set to buy Widett Circle for potential mega-project - The Boston Globe

The site had been talked about as the home for a stadium as part of Boston's ill-fated 2024 Olympics bid.

www.bostonglobe.com

....The New Boston Food Market, a cooperative of food wholesalers that owns about 20 acres of land in Widett Circle, has been talking with potential buyers for several years, while also trying to negotiate new homes — relatively close to the center of the city — for the distributors and wholesalers who operate there today. The cooperative appears to have reached a deal with Keravuori.

Documents filed with the BPDA say his firm, with financial backing from a California state employee pension fund, will pay it $125 million for the site, and give the occupants a year to move.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The BDPA trips over itself to swoon after this guy, but he has absolutely no idea what he'll build there because NOBODY EVER DOES. And also, "Fuck you, T storage needs possibly providing a solution for the decking conundrum. Turf warrage FTW, ungh-ungh!"

How can it possibly go wrong?! I mean, surely the odds of this deal collapsing with egg on the BDPA's face or the inevitable 11th hour undercutting of the price so the guy can sit on the dust 'bowl' for 50 years are so small we can't lose, amirite? And there's no way the Cali state pension fund providing the lion's-share backing is in any way a gigantic red flag with Wave II COVID actively sweeping over that state! Shirley Leung...hyperbolic comment?


EDIT: Fuck...it's the Cali State Teacher's Pension Fund that's providing the backing. That is literally the worst possible thing imaginable. The fund, which was only funded to 60% of payout commitments, went on a refinancing binge big into real estate debt the last 3 years to goose its bottom line. Now because of the COVID furloughs it's underfunded by half for this school year with the apocalyptic damage expected to continue into the 2020-21 school year. And a simultaneous national real estate crash to boot in the ensuing recession. Last article I could find from first week of March--eons ago in COVID time and right at the start of the state's school-year pause--was maydaying an $800M unexpected fund shortfall to-date for this school year. That's child's play compared to what it's ballooned to now, and what it projects to be with Wave II now officially running unhinged in the Bear Republic.

Jesus Christ, ^this^ house of cards and there isn't even an actual "development"...just a land-parking...behind the largest acreage sell-off in BRA/BDPA history. But somehow this is their first COVID-recovery salvo to Boston real estate??? WTF do we even pay taxes to have a "Redevelopment" authority for if this is the kind of low/no -gain bullshit they're giant-leaping over every caution flag to ram through? Wow...they're already doing such a bang-up job conceding #2-biggest-of-all acreage giveaway Beacon Park as a "we're not even pretending anymore" land-parking for the next 25 years of Harvard's endowment. Now we need an encore white-flag waving right now today to the land-parking the next generation of Boston residents grow old seeing nothing happen to. And give it away to the first fly-by-night consortium that shows up happened to be backed by just about the scariest COVID-addled house-of-cards funding imaginable. And that's their signature recovery move???

Defund the BDPA. Now, please.

 

[stick n move]

Revs stadium or gtfo.

 

[palindrome]

Getting on the first page of a 10 year thread.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Getting on the first page of a 10 year thread.

*Only* 10 years would be a relative godsend. Decade is already a piker in accrued Beacon Park non-development time.

No, this is signing away a 30+ year "I got nuthin'" so some guy can shift paper debt digits around his portfolio while tumbleweed accumulates in the bowl. How it became our namesake "Redevelopment" authority's defining mission in life to facilitate this polar-opposite-of-redevving sequence of one-way asset transfer is a conundrum worth a multi-year debate/riot/primal-scream therapy unto itself.

Remember when Walsh campaigned on full-on abolishing them instead of rearranging the letters in the acronym that's long stopped meaning what it spelled? Good times.

 

[DZH22]

Getting on the first page of a 10 year thread.

Dear world, when something is finally built here, please remember us.....

The youngest people on Archboston will probably be grandparents by then.

 

[Stlin]

How much did the BPDA have to do with this anyways, beyond approving one of 2 land sales? Those 2 sites, unlike BTD and DPW aren't publicly owned. It sounds like the private owners of the Food Mart and Cold Storage (co-op and americold) were the ones making the decision to sell. If this actually closes, extant tenants will supposedly move out within the year, so he's evidently found them an acceptable home; hopefully, they're going to the planned massport site in a much more efficient building. Given that light industrial is not worth developing in widett at all, and access is so crap, plans are probably going to take decades to shake out... and an empty site is just going to be a massive tax burden for the developer... and hopefully incentivise the state to take it off his hands.

 

[tysmith95]

Does the BDPA even have the power to block a land sale without using eminent domain powers?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

How much did the BPDA have to do with this anyways, beyond approving one of 2 land sales? Those 2 sites, unlike BTD and DPW aren't publicly owned. It sounds like the private owners of the Food Mart and Cold Storage (co-op and americold) were the ones making the decision to sell. If this actually closes, extant tenants will supposedly move out within the year, so he's evidently found them an acceptable home; hopefully, they're going to the planned massport site in a much more efficient building. Given that light industrial is not worth developing in widett at all, and access is so crap, plans are probably going to take decades to shake out an empty site is just going to be a massive tax burden for the developer... and hopefully incentivise the state to take it off his hands.

Legacy cruft. BRA was the originator of the Food Market site when the vendors were kicked out of Faneuil Hall by the White Administration in the early-70's, so they unfortunately have signoff powers here tied up in the zoning. By being utterly noncommittal about what goes there the developer makes an end-run around a zoning change and the BDPA gets to try to rubber-stamp it under "no change order" before anyone gers a word in edgewise. Thus it is fully fair game to question why the BDPA is so hot to make a land sale that has *zero* development proposals attached to it, as that's an arguable dereliction of duty that their zoning approval powers should be duly policing in a land district of their own creation. Since the Food Market is getting generous City and Massport assistance on building the new digs for relocation, it was assumed they were going to seek comment before cashing 'dem checks. They've apparently decided they like their chances of getting Massport money anyway while simultaneously fucking over the state with a stealth deal. That's bad enough, but 'good faith' has never been some of their tenants' strong suit. The BDPA going embedded to assist them is another thing entirely. Like, really, are we not even pretending anymore that it takes a City AND a State to get big things accomplished??? The other smelly stuff like the financing source red-flags and the horrible rush to ram this 11th-hour approval through in 72 hours flat reeks of what it reeks of. But it is, unfornatuately, BDPA's baby to shepherd the handoff. Which was always going to be a problem here because their expectations were never ever realistic. I'm just not sure we ever anticipated it being whittled down so far as to being a straight no-build asset handoff, done with such no-questions-asked rush when ALL SORTS OF RED FLAGS are flying.

Americold is the only legit private-to-private transaction. And they're turds anyway who've gone full-troll against any/all land-use dealing surrounding them ever since their usage-inappropriate recycling center redev proposal was rejected a couple years back. They've long wanted out, but have had a very public jones for sticking it to both City + State on their way out.


All told, a cromulent way to reignate the "WTF are we keeping this agency around for?" debate. Because this transaction pretty much dredges up all past Exhibits A-thru-Z on that whole existential cripple-fight, and puts Walsh back on the hotseat over whether the word "reform" has any meaning to him anymore. But they may not get very far any which way because the lack of any dev plan also means the developer is being let off the hook for any comment on flood control responsibilities in Boston's #1-with-bullet biggest inundation concern property. City Council (Wu especially) has previously warned that they're going to wield the hammer on any deal here that doesn't bake in sympatico planning tendrils to the City's flood resiliency effort...and this pretty flagrantly does not do that. That's unavoidably cross-jurisdictional because of where the funding pot for the flood resiliency effort intersects, so right then and there we might have an immediate delay-causing stopper in the BDPA's over-hopes of ramming this sale through by Friday.

So next phase is probably the natural resting state of inter-agency cooperation in Metro Boston: open-ended gridlock and finger-pointing. Hooray!

---- ---- ---- ----

EDIT: Buyer's also requesting to retain the property tax break (covered under code obscura re: "food processing") while being released from the land-use restrictions in that code. BDPA sez "Sure!!!", pending a hypothetical future land-use change request after the transaction is consumated where they don't say what conditions are required for their ultimate approval of said change request. Tactically witholding any mention of dev plans up-front may thus net the developer a lifetime approved property tax break under a code for land usage completely/totally unrelated to what ultimately goes up onsite. Mention buried deep in the BDPA memo.

Corrupt...as...fuck.

 

[HelloBostonHi]

Does the BDPA even have the power to block a land sale without using eminent domain powers?

The BPDA in this instance has very little involvement and very little power to stop it. People forget that the modern era BPDA has very little legal power. Great example is the highly controversial Dorchester Ave Amazon site which completely bypassed the BPDA and they have basically no legal way of stopping it either.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

The BPDA in this instance has very little involvement and very little power to stop it. People forget that the modern era BPDA has very little legal power. Great example is the highly controversial Dorchester Ave Amazon site which completely bypassed the BPDA and they have basically no legal way of stopping it either.

The BPDA doesn't own this site.

But the crux of the sale is in the zoning approvals, where the BDPA holds all the cards. It's tax-amnestied under food processing & storage per the agreements that relocated the Food Market there in the first place. The corrupt bargain now in place is that the new buyer has conditional quid-pro-quo approval to retain the tax break **without ever saying what its land-use intent is**. To say that's a wee bit problematic is the understatement of the year.

Yes: this transaction completely/totally goes to the heart of the BDPA's involvement, and likely does not happen AT ALL as a solely private party-to-private party transaction were it not for the tax break retention tie-in that is all the BDPA's call...and which, for reasons bafflingly unknown, they seem overly hot to give pre-assurances for when there is zero statutory reason for them to go that far. The site's been up for sale over a year...but this 'suddenly' comes over the wire as a done deal once they volunteer an advance statement about intent to approve probable land-use changes with the carry-over tax waiver? And now we have a deal where we didn't before? BDPA going above and beyond the call to insert, embed, and obfuscate on a deal where that was completely and wholly optional is why this is now going to be--yet again--a debate about why we have a BDPA when it doesn't seem to feel like answering to anyone except itself. Because it sure looks like that deal is happening solely because they were the ones who stepped up to give quid pro quo assurances to put their finger on the tax scale while levying no conditions on the developer for the favor.


What is the possible logic for telling this buyer "Don't worry about the tax break...we'll approve your land-use change request" up-front and in a terrible rush? Shouldn't those things be weighed on-the-merits as they're proposed? This is the LARGEST brokered land transaction by acreage since the BRA/BDPA's formation. Shouldn't they be exercising some basic fiduciary responsibility to make sure their zoning approvals, the City's tax code, and the developer's chosen land usage are all in general alignment with each other and transparently factored when said property tax haul is the City's largest interest in the fate of the property? What possible advantage is there to pre-obfuscation of a decision process that's supposed to protect the taxpayer's interest?

The BDPA chose to insert themselves this precisely risky/unaccountable way. Nobody but them decided to grease the financial skids, using their specific approval powers, in a way that leaves the transaction potentially at direct odds with the tax base of the City they serve. If that isn't (another) existential debate over why we continue granting them power outside the lines, then I don't know what is.

 

[DBM]

Because it sure looks like that deal is happening solely because they were the ones who stepped up to give quid pro quo assurances to put their finger on the tax scale while levying no conditions on the developer for the favor.

I'm shocked, shocked to hear insinuations of the BPDA playing favorites here--are you being so audacious as to imply the agency has possible ethical entanglements in this negotiation?

 

[kjdonovan]

Getting on the first page of a 10 year thread.

Yeah, may want to rethink the title of this thread. Going to be real sick of seeing this by 2030.

 

[HelloBostonHi]

But the crux of the sale is in the zoning approvals, where the BDPA holds all the cards. It's tax-amnestied under food processing & storage per the agreements that relocated the Food Market there in the first place. The corrupt bargain now in place is that the new buyer has conditional quid-pro-quo approval to retain the tax break **without ever saying what its land-use intent is**. To say that's a wee bit problematic is the understatement of the year.

Yes: this transaction completely/totally goes to the heart of the BDPA's involvement, and likely does not happen AT ALL as a solely private party-to-private party transaction were it not for the tax break retention tie-in that is all the BDPA's call...and which, for reasons bafflingly unknown, they seem overly hot to give pre-assurances for when there is zero statutory reason for them to go that far. The site's been up for sale over a year...but this 'suddenly' comes over the wire as a done deal once they volunteer an advance statement about intent to approve probable land-use changes with the carry-over tax waiver? And now we have a deal where we didn't before? BDPA going above and beyond the call to insert, embed, and obfuscate on a deal where that was completely and wholly optional is why this is now going to be--yet again--a debate about why we have a BDPA when it doesn't seem to feel like answering to anyone except itself. Because it sure looks like that deal is happening solely because they were the ones who stepped up to give quid pro quo assurances to put their finger on the tax scale while levying no conditions on the developer for the favor.


What is the possible logic for telling this buyer "Don't worry about the tax break...we'll approve your land-use change request" up-front and in a terrible rush? Shouldn't those things be weighed on-the-merits as they're proposed? This is the LARGEST brokered land transaction by acreage since the BRA/BDPA's formation. Shouldn't they be exercising some basic fiduciary responsibility to make sure their zoning approvals, the City's tax code, and the developer's chosen land usage are all in general alignment with each other and transparently factored when said property tax haul is the City's largest interest in the fate of the property? What possible advantage is there to pre-obfuscation of a decision process that's supposed to protect the taxpayer's interest?

The BDPA chose to insert themselves this precisely risky/unaccountable way. Nobody but them decided to grease the financial skids, using their specific approval powers, in a way that leaves the transaction potentially at direct odds with the tax base of the City they serve. If that isn't (another) existential debate over why we continue granting them power outside the lines, then I don't know what is.

While certainly linked, the BPDA does not decide zoning laws or zoning exemptions in the City of Boston. Zoning rules are decided by the Zoning Commission, although the BPDA frequently petitions for Zoning changes based on the results of planning studies. Similarly the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) is far more powerful than the BPDA and grants exemptions to zoning. The BPDA has no say in how they choose to rule and depending on a project lines up with Article 80, some projects only ever see ZBA and never even touch the BPDA, but the majority of large projects are required to get BPDA Board Approval before then seeking ZBA approval.

When this comes to the BPDA for redevelopment it will absolutely lose its tax break. But right now it's just a land sale, that's not where the BPDA starts getting involved, it's when the land usages starts changing the BPDA gets involved.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

While certainly linked, the BPDA does not decide zoning laws or zoning exemptions in the City of Boston. Zoning rules are decided by the Zoning Commission, although the BPDA frequently petitions for Zoning changes based on the results of planning studies. Similarly the Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) is far more powerful than the BPDA and grants exemptions to zoning. The BPDA has no say in how they choose to rule and depending on a project lines up with Article 80, some projects only ever see ZBA and never even touch the BPDA, but the majority of large projects are required to get BPDA Board Approval before then seeking ZBA approval.

When this comes to the BPDA for redevelopment it will absolutely lose its tax break. But right now it's just a land sale, that's not where the BPDA starts getting involved, it's when the land usages starts changing the BPDA gets involved.

The BDPA was already asked point-blank by the developer how fudgy a zone change they'd be willing to ram through no-questions-asked without losing the "Food Processing" tax break. The BDPA already advised them that it would approve virtually anything within the rounds of plausible deniability, such that they had no need to so much as speculate what their intended land use was to pocket the I.O.U. Whether the ZBA feels the need to reverse such action is moot, because it should be dictated by how the situation evolves whether it even reaches that level. BDPA has pre-dictated that it will with certainty be required to get that far because they have stated their outright intent to never give a flying fuck whether this particular developer's land use matches the statutes.


It stopped being "just a land sale" when the BDPA offered of its own volition that assurance. The developer was on-the-fence about proceeding until the BDPA opened its mouth.

Do you get it? They already exceeded the bounds of every statute on the fucking books that said they weren't required to get involved...by up and involving themselves preemptively. That's more than "linked". They were statutorially discouraged from getting involved...but chose to get involved as deep as it gets by putting their finger on the scale. And they do not seem to give a flying fuck that this is right out there in their own item transcripts begging for immediate investigation. It is now fated that the next-rung-up level of checks-and-balances must act decisively for the tax status to be interpreted fairly because they've already stated that they won't care. Do we really want to have a system where appeals to the top of the chain are the default assumption going into initial offering of deal terms instead of a measure of last resort for adjudicating a deal starting to list sideways??? Because that's definitely not how the system was originally intended to work. The ZBA isn't supposed to be having its activity pre-conditioned by someone lower on the chain taking the barn door off its hinges because YOLO.

This is an already-problem of their own choosing, and own flagrant nose-thumbing at the other institutions they live amongst. Not a potential future problem, an active present problem by their own decisive initiation. Do we really want to be maintaining institutions that see themselves as operating outside the bounds of the intertwined sandbox they have to play in...habitually and remorselessly, as it were? So we debate this very thing yet-a-fucking-'gain barely 3-1/2 years after the last "reform" that turned out to be anything but. Cycle of life has completed until somebody wants to run as the next obnoxiously loud "reform" candidate and the next inevitable whittling-down to status quo starts anew.

 

[Stlin]

light industrial isn't a bad use - the world is moving towards last mile industrial with the rise of "everyone buying everything online all the time". that, data centers, and comm towers have been some of the best performers thru the pandemic. a lot of neighborhood retail will likely get redeveloped as last mile DC in the coming years...

Now you're talking my industry... maybe. DC as in Distribution Center I would agree that there's plenty of demand, but not at the $125 million land price, location, or scale of site. Those last mile facilities are also just not that big. Urban Data Centers however? I don't think its going to happen in the bowl; maybe a smaller colo short to medium term, but nothing massive, as again, the land is too expensive. Massachusetts also simply isn't a place that really has large data centers. There isn't a single hyperscale or new build DC project I'm aware of in development for MA. Data center placement really is driven by network, land, power, and taxes; none of those things are conducive to DC construction in Widett. There's a reason Des Moines has more and larger data centers than Boston, playing host to Google, Microsoft, FB and Apple, with square footage measured in the millions of square feet. Such hyperscale, billion dollar, million square foot 80+MW data centers like the ones that FB are building out in IA will simply never happen anywhere in MA, let alone the bowl on the basis of electricity prices alone. MA commercial electricity is ~16.8/kW. Iowa is ~9.2. That's 600k a year more in just electricity. MA corporate excise taxes on servers and other assets will kill you, not to mention you can buy 210 acres out there for just 11 million.

All of the dedicated DCs in Boston and Inner burbs are relatively small, with most DCs concentrated in the 95 belt; Waltham, Needham, etc. While there's always a case for edge DCs, those are usually on a scale much closer to a shipping container than a large building, and nowhere near needing the whole bowl. Comms towers? great business to be in, but doesn't use any land. You can plop a set of cell antennae on any convenient structure, and most of metro boston's are rooftop installs. Besides, 5G's mmWave frequencies has an optimal effective range of just 500m, with much greater interference from things like... well, rain. It also does't really go through things like buildings that well. It basically dictates a massive increase in the number of small cells, moving away from macrocells. In a metro area like Boston with a substantial building and population density, that means rooftops.

Either way, while light industrial isn't necessarily a bad use, I don't think it'll pay for the site. If I were responsible for building either, and absolutely had to be in the area, I'd be looking at picking up something much more affordable near Newmarket.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Now you're talking my industry... maybe. DC as in Distribution Center I would agree that there's plenty of demand, but not at the $125 million land price, location, or scale of site. Those last mile facilities are also just not that big. Urban Data Centers however? I don't think its going to happen in the bowl; maybe a smaller colo short to medium term, but nothing massive, as again, the land is too expensive. Massachusetts also simply isn't a place that really has large data centers. There isn't a single hyperscale or new build DC project I'm aware of in development for MA. Data center placement really is driven by network, land, power, and taxes; there's a reason Des Moines IA has more and larger data centers than Boston, playing host to Google, Microsoft, FB and Apple, with square footage measured in the millions of square feet. All of the dedicated DCs in Boston and Inner burbs are relatively small, with most DCs concentrated in the 95 belt; Waltham, Needham, etc. While there's always a case for edge DCs, those are usually on a scale much closer to a shipping container than a large building, and nowhere near needing the whole bowl. Comms towers? great business to be in, doesn't use any land. You can plop a set of cell antennae on any convenient structure, and most of metro boston's are rooftop installs.

Either way, while light industrial isn't necessarily a bad use, I don't think it'll pay for the site. If I were responsible for building either, and absolutely had to be in the area, I'd be looking at picking up something much more affordable near Newmarket.

Well, sure. There's appropriate land use. And then there's connected insiders who've mastered the revolving door at the BDPA getting favors to get pre-assured "Food Processing" property tax breaks without showing their cards on what they do actually plan to do. I'm sure you could build an awesome data center there if your taxes were virtually nothing. You could also build...nothing at all!...and just let the windblown trash appreciate in value over 30 years because it's costing you bupkis to just sit on it. Problem is, who do you have to have on your Board of Directors to get such wholly preemptive offer? $175M is a heist if it costs you damn near nothing to stick in a portfolio plan-free. But membership in the revolving-door club...ah, that's priceless!

Thoughtful Twitter thread reading below. I don't agree with the main author's sky high top-line valuation of the property at all...but it is screamingly obvious that today's story is the bottom-line depression of value from this being just the latest in an endless line of "membership has its privileges" moments of activist intervention by a BDPA that selectively forgets it's in the development planning space whenever the chummiest of phone numbers lights up the caller ID.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1273429602858393600

...or TL;DR version:

But would add the fact that Suffolk Construction is an investor in this project seems, well, significant.

Gee...ya think, lead story reporting guy? Maybe that thought is worth just a little more Globular investigation effort than an "I wonder?" throwaway tweet.

 

[Stlin]

Well, sure. There's appropriate land use. And then there's connected insiders who've mastered the revolving door at the BDPA getting favors to get pre-assured "Food Processing" property tax breaks without showing their cards on what they do actually plan to do. I'm sure you could build an awesome data center there if your taxes were virtually nothing. You could also build...nothing at all!...and just let the windblown trash appreciate in value over 30 years because it's costing you bupkis to just sit on it.

No offense, but I'm simply going to avoid debate of the BDPA, its actions or inactions, or the sale terms. Anything anyone, including me, says at this point is speculation anyways; nothing is even close to final here.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

No offense, but I'm simply not going to debate the BDPA, its actions or inactions, or the sale terms. Anything anyone, including me, says at this point is speculation anyways; nothing is even close to final here.

As I said in reply to HBHi...we're beyond speculation already. Overt action was initiated in the hearing and documented in the minutes to make a speculative statement about upholding the tax break when there was zero jurisdictional, statutory, or motivational reason to say boo about that. Say boo at this time, or say boo by them at all. No, it is not the final word by a longshot on the fate of the property. It's probably not much more than a first word with the degree to which this is going to get picked apart...such that I can't see a scenario where this bang-bang sale actually goes down by Friday as planned.

But yes, it is a already a major problem that such action was initiated by the BDPA to obfuscate the tax code implications, and to aid the developer's unwillingness to name any potential land use. How do we accurately measure land value and potential return into the City's tax coffers if first action is to -=widen=-...not close or leave-be...the loophole of what land usage the BDPA would wholeheartedly support transferring the Food Processing tax break towards? They're a planning and development agency. It's their fucking jobs to solicit plans for development, not encourage greater end-runs for avoiding doing so and leave it to some other agency to clean up if they overstepped their bounds. And since the who's-who involved here includes none other than...yep, Suffolk, of Mr. Fish fame and all the attempted Boston 2024 end-runs around this very site...it's now fully fair game to critique who they're making end-runs on behalf of vs. who they won't (which the Twitter thread gets into).

It's unpleasant discussion...I get that. But it's unpleasant because we're dealing with it YET AGAIN like fucking Groundhog Day with this outfit. And it's unpleasant because we'd love to be talking problem-solving nuts-and-bolts about the Widett site itself, but here they are without any provocation putting their hands on the scale on behalf of yet another set of connected insiders. Just like that...the foul-smelling inside ball becomes the story, not the development plan (which of course there is none here).

 

[stick n move]

Great example is the highly controversial Dorchester Ave Amazon site which completely bypassed the BPDA and they have basically no legal way of stopping it either.

Yea I was wondering about that, ya know cuz... This


N stuff