Image courtesy of Google Maps.

Harvard has named Boston-based real estate investment firm Berkeley Investments to redevelop one of the city’s most well-known white elephant commercial properties.

The Boston Tech Center at 176 Lincoln St. has sat vacant for many years while just across the Mass. Pike, New Balance’s Boston Landing has taken shape. Constructed in the early 1900s as a warehouse, Cabot, Cabot & Forbes purchased the building for $32 million in June 2000, but plans to lease it to telecom firms were dashed by the dot-com crash. After struggling for more than five years to lease up the hulking commercial property in Allston, including an effort to reposition it as lab space, CC&F opted to sell the 450,000-square-foot building to Harvard in 2006 with several failed redevelopment and land swap plans playing out since then.

“Harvard is incredibly excited to partner with Berkeley Investments on the exciting redevelopment opportunity at 176 Lincoln St.,” a statement from the school read, “and looks forward to working closely with them about how to creatively activate an area that has been vacant for many years. The university continues to envision an exciting mixed-use project that takes full advantage of the intersections of various opportunities in and around the neighborhood, and that will resonate with people wanting to move into, and stay, in the area.”