| The Columbus Center project continues to stop and start and stop again. A September 25 meeting about Columbus Center with the Cortes Street neighborhood and the Mass. Turnpike has been postponed, due to a schedule conflict from the Turnpike’s executive director. A rescheduled meeting will be announced soon, a Turnpike spokesperson said.
In the meantime, a meeting last week with the Columbus Center Community Construction Committee had developers stating they are still looking to build the deck all at once.
“They would not be changing the project,” said Deputy Director for Community Planning Randi Lathrop. “They are particularly focusing on the platform.”
For 13 years, residents, city and state officials and developers have been working on the ambitious Columbus Center, which promises to link the South End and Back Bay by building over the turnpike and creating a hotel, residential, and retail complex. The project has received public subsidies totaling $116 million, but when the developers’ request for more money was rejected, the project stalled and developers requested an 18-month extension to find more financing. The deadline to approve that extension has passed.
According to the cost consultants investigating the financial viability of the project, they may have found a less expensive way to build the seven acres of tunnels below the skyscraper complex.
that was first proposed 13 years ago. Beal’s Senior Vice President and General Counsel Peter Spellios said the "deck" would be called a "platform" due to a different and cheaper engineering technology that can be used. Such changes to the project are the key to making the project affordable, said Spellios.
Before the end of the year, if approved, the project will resume construction, continue its temporary suspension, or be canceled, said McDermott. City officials confirmed that the project would not differ from plans made and approved in 2003.
However, all involved look anxiously to a viability report due November 15 from Related Properties of New York and the Beal Companies of Boston. They were hired by the project’s owners, MacFarlane Urban Realty Co. and WinnCompanies, to evaluate the center’s viability, said Bruce Beal Sr., of the Beal Companies. CalPERS (California Public Employees Retirement System) is the primary financial backer of the project.
"The current go-or-no-go analysis is the final round, and there will be no more chapters after that," said Pamela McDermott, a spokesperson for the developers.
The meeting was also attended by McDermott Ventures’ president and executive vice president, Mayor's Neighborhood Coordinator Tabitha Bennett, BRA Senior Planner Mary Knasas, John Herbert of the South End Ellis Neighborhood Association, John Shope of Bay Village Neighborhood Association, Lynn Andrews of Cortes Street residents, and Karen Lassiter and Joel Miller of Pope Condominium.
The BRA reports that the Columbus Center Committee is working with the developers to fix up the site in the meantime. “They are going to move equipment and trailers, see if parking can be restored, and clean up the site as much as it can,” said Lathrop. “Beal and Related will come back around November 15, and we’ll be meeting back with the construction committee.”
That’s another dubious deadline, said Columbus Center watchdog Ned Flaherty, of 75 Clarendon Street Condominium, who also attended last week’s meeting. He notes a long list of missed deadlines, including those set by the Turnpike Authority to approve the construction delay, a November 2007 deadline to have bank financing by January 15, then February 15. In April, the owners said they would regroup, talk to lenders, work with city and state officials, and come back with a new plan, according to one news story. But Columbus Center President Roger Cassin came back empty handed from a visit to his California financial backers.“We are spending $5 million a month on this,” Cassin told Banker & Tradesman. In May, the MTA set a June deadline to renegotiate, but the developers again missed that deadline, so the MTA extended that deadline to July. “The owners missed that deadline, too,” said Flaherty.
Flaherty said experts disagree on whether the project can be saved, citing a meeting held last week where air rights developer John Rosenthal reportedly told Boston Redevelopment Authority and turnpike officials that such a project is cost-prohibitive, and that he believes that most of Boston's 23 air rights properties will never get developed.
According to Flaherty, the MTA still needs to revise the project’s lease. “The developers defaulted on the 99-year lease signed in May 2006, when they failed to start construction on time and failed to obtain bank loans,” he said. “Under the original lease, the seven acres of tunnels were to have been completed in October 2008, but nothing was ever built. And the latest version of that lease allows the developers to postpone completion to 2025.”
He also noted a revised agreement is needed with CSX, the freight railroad that owns some of the rail lines that would run through tunnels underneath the project; and a new lease is needed for Manulife Insurance, which donated land and funding for Garcia Park, but meanwhile has rented the land to Columbus Center for temporary equipment and materials storage.
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