The political firestorm over MassDOT’s abortive selection of Irish retailer Applegreen to redevelop 18 highway service plazas wasn’t the first time the agency picked a company with no experience in Massachusetts over local companies that offered higher bids on state-owned real estate.

Two MassDOT-owned parcels in Boston’s Back Bay and Chinatown that could host thousands of housing units and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in lease payments sit undeveloped, while officials await signs of progress from their hand-picked developer, Peebles Corporation.

Headed by R. Donahue Peebles, a prominent developer and former fundraiser for President Barack Obama with no previous experience in Massachusetts real estate, the Miami Beach company won the rights to develop parcel 13 in the Back Bay in 2015 and parcel 25 on the edge of Chinatown in 2022.

Scott Bosworth, the senior MassDOT real estate official who now faces a conflict-of-interest complaint in the service plazas procurement, recommended Peebles Corporation over competing local companies.

Waltham-based Global Partners has filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission alleging Bosworth exchanged improper texts with members of the Applegreen team, including Suffolk Construction CEO John Fish, before Bosworth recommended Applegreen’s selection. Applegreen withdrew its bid in September, and MassDOT has not announced whether it will rebid the contract.

The controversy has resurfaced questions about the lack of progress at parcels 13 and 25.

“With what we saw with Applegreen’s withdrawal and Scott Bosworth’s sticky fingers involvement, it’s going to create a lot of doubt and put a cloud over some of the other contracts he’s been publicly associated with,” said Paul Craney, executive director of the conservative Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance.

Related Story: Fish Defends Contact with State Transportation Official

Back Bay Project Bogged Down

Peebles Corporation made its Bay State debut in 2015, when it won MassDOT’s nod to develop parcel 13 in Back Bay. The air rights development would rise above the Massachusetts Turnpike at the western entrance to the Prudential Center tunnel, at the corner of Boylston Street and Massachusetts Avenue.

Amid a historic building boom that reshaped the Boston skyline, however, it wasn’t until February 2020 that Peebles Corporation kicked off its permitting with the city. The proposal for a 432,000-square-foot hotel-and-condominium building was submitted just a month before widespread COVID lockdowns that disrupted the hotel industry and commercial real estate.

Peebles changed course in September 2022, submitting a new proposal for 125 income-restricted apartments and 300,000 square feet of office-lab space.

In an interview with Banker & Tradesman at the time, Peebles laid blame for the delays on MassDOT, saying they “didn’t dot all the I’s” on public procurement laws and had to backtrack and issue a separate bid on upgrades to the MBTA’s Hynes Convention Center station tied to the Parcel 13 project, pushing back the timeline.

In 2015, MassDOT awarded development rights to Peebles Corporation for parcel 13 in Back Bay. The project remains stalled, with no updates provided by the developer since 2022. Image courtesy of MassDOT

The Boston Planning Department has not received any new development filings from Peebles Corporation for parcel 13 since the fall of 2022.

The site sits across the street from parcel 12, which MassDOT awarded to local firm Samuels & Associates in 2013. The company’s two-tower Lyrik Back Bay project began construction in 2020 and opened last year.

Peebles founded his company in 1983 and has experience with 5 million square feet of completed or current development, according to its web site.

Peebles has had success winning government-awarded development rights in other cities, along with similar project delays.

In 2016, the Mecklenburg County Commissioners picked Peebles Corporation to redevelop the Brooklyn neighborhood in Charlotte, North Carolina, but no groundbreakings have taken place, public radio affiliate WFAE reported in June.

Atlanta’s transit authority MARTA awarded Peebles Corporation development rights for its Bankhead station in 2022, but the developer has yet to begin work, Bisnow reported last month.

MassDOT Gives Peebles Another Chance

Despite the delays on parcel 13, MassDOT’s board of directors selected Peebles Corporation in March 2022 over five other teams to develop another high-profile air rights parcel. This time it was parcel 25, a 1.4-acre site off Kneeland Street bordering Chinatown.

Chinatown’s troubled relationship with the Massachusetts highway department dates back to construction of Interstate 93 in the 1950s. Thousands of residents’ homes were displaced to make way for the highway and later the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension, which bracketed the neighborhood’s new eastern and southern boundaries. The neighborhood has the worst air pollution in Massachusetts, according to a 2022 study.

The history of displacement prompted community activists to demand that MassDOT require a generous affordable housing component on what is the neighborhood’s last big development parcel.

Peebles Corporation’s selection took place with an absence of public input. Unlike the Boston Planning Department, which routinely holds public forums when offering major parcels for development, MassDOT made its final selection of Peebles Corporation in 2022 without any public meetings between the issuance of the request for proposals and the vote to select Peebles.

“Their process felt kind of like it was more for show,” said Angie Liou, executive director of the Asian Community Development Corporation, a Chinatown-based nonprofit affordable housing developer.

Peebles Corporation and Genesis Companies teamed up to propose 218 units of housing and 309,000 square feet of office/lab space on MassDOT’s parcel 25 in Boston’s Chinatown. Image courtesy of Utile and Moody Nolan

Six teams presented offers in all. Liou’s organization partnered with a team of experienced developers including the nation’s largest life science landlord, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, and Newton-based National Development, on a competing proposal for 330,000 square feet of lab space and 93 housing units.

Boston-based Trinity Financial partnered with Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center on a housing-focused plan including 394 residential units. Trinity Financial did not respond to a request for comment.

Liou said her organization and other neighborhood groups objected to MassDOT’s decision to make housing an optional component of the development, reflecting concerns about the neighborhood’s history of displacement. One developer, BioMed Realty, did not include any housing, proposing 736,000 square feet of lab space.

In March 2022, the MassDOT board awarded the parcel 25 development rights to a partnership of Peebles Corporation and New York-based Genesis Companies.

At a public meeting of the MassDOT board Bosworth, the senior MassDOT real estate official who recommended Peebles, acknowledged that the company did not submit the highest financial offer. The deciding factor was the diversity of Peebles’ team, which included a partnership between two Black-owned development teams: Peebles Corporation and Genesis Companies.

No development proposals for parcel 25 have been submitted to the Boston Planning Department since then.

Genesis Companies does not list parcel 25 among the projects on its website. A spokesperson for Berlin Rosen, a public relations firm that represents Genesis Companies, did not respond to an inquiry about whether the company is a partner with Peebles Corporation on parcel 25.

Peebles Corporation spokesperson Kendall Pryles did not respond to a query about whether Genesis Companies is part of the parcel 25 development team. No companies are registered in Massachusetts’ corporation database under the name of Genesis Companies’ CEO, Karim Hutson.

Steve Adams

Developer Maintains a Low Profile

Lydia Lowe, executive developer of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, said her organization hasn’t heard from Peebles Corporation for 18 months.

The Chinatown CLT is partnering with the Friends of Reggie Wong Park on planned upgrades to the MassDOT-owned playground next to parcel 25. Situated between the two southern portals to the O’Neill Tunnel, the park is the largest public recreation space in the neighborhood.

Other parcel 25 bidders included community organizations in their project planning, Lowe said in an email, while Peebles Corporation didn’t contact CLT until 2023.

In March 2024, the two sides had a brief online meeting, during which the Friends of the Reggie Wong Park updated Peebles Corporation about their plans and advocated for Peebles Corporation to play “a significant role” in improving open space and pedestrian access in the densely built-up neighborhood, Lowe said.

R. Donahue Peebles did not return a series of messages seeking comment. In an email, Peebles Corporation spokesperson Pryles said the company is “in the pre-development stage, evaluating land use and overall feasibility for the parcels.”

A MassDOT spokesperson did not respond to inquiries from Banker & Tradesman about whether the agency has any plans to reopen parcels 13 and 25 to other bidders, or whether Peebles Corporation faces any deadlines to make progress.