The election of a new mayor will trigger a shakeup in Boston’s highly competitive development scene, with a new wave of builders set to take the lead in the years ahead.

And Thomas O’Brien, the former City Hall development chief turned mega developer, is my pick as the leading light of this new generation of up-and-coming developers.

O’Brien managed to survive the wrath of Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and stay viable. It may sound easy, but it’s a feat few builders beyond the mayor’s inner circle have managed to do.

O’Brien has not only managed to survive, but to thrive, becoming the go-to man on three blockbuster projects that could remake the urban core of Greater Boston.

When he’s not pushing the massive Government Center Garage redevelopment forward, O’Brien is overseeing plans for a new Cambridge neighborhood at NorthPoint and a piece of another one in the Seaport.

And after years of working for other development companies, O’Brien is the master of his own destiny, a developer in his own right, founding partner and managing director of The HYM Investment Group.

“I launched this in the fall of 2009,” O’Brien recalled last week. “I took a few dollars out of savings and put it together.” O’Brien comes to the work of city building with a hard-to-beat mix of savvy government-sector experience combined with a nearly 15-year run in the private sector.

He is one of a small but successful group of developers who at one time or another ran the development arm of Boston City Hall, the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

It is a group that includes Bob Walsh, who went on to run his own big-time construction and consulting firm, and Stephen Coyle, chief executive of the AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust.

O’Brien started out as chief of staff in 1993, early in the Menino era, rising to lead the development authority as Fan Pier and other multibillion-dollar projects were just getting teed up in the late 1990s.

Former City Hall development chiefs like O’Brien are a rare and valuable breed, coming armed with an inherent understanding of Boston’s byzantine project approval process and how things really work in the Hub.

It’s a major advantage. All one has to do is look at the powerful outsiders who have come to Boston and flopped big time – New York’s Vornado, which became notorious for the Filene’s mess, to name one – to understand how important this insider view is.

OK, it wasn’t all roses – O’Brien was basically forced out of the BRA back in 1999 after his chief of staff got into hot water, buying a subsidized waterfront condo, one that was supposed to go to an average buyer of more modest means.

Then again, it was an era in which City Hall development chiefs were typically shown the door after two or three years, with the high-pressure, highly political job never particularly lending itself to longevity.

More importantly, O’Brien landed on his feet in the private sector, going on to run the Boston area operations for such development giants at Tishman Speyer and JPI before deciding to strike on out his own.

“Having worked on both sides of these issues have given me a unique perspective,” O’Brien said. “The key element in how we are successful is that we try really hard to listen to people. These things [projects] don’t work if you are not direct and up front with people.”

Gambling On Mega Projects

O’Brien launched HYM Investment in 2009, a seemingly odd year to do anything other than hunker down, let alone start your own development firm.

After all, 2009 saw the worst of the Great Recession, with little or no new construction of any kind on the horizon.

Yet the timing was perfect from the standpoint of O’Brien’s audacious business plan, which involved scooping up flawed mega projects that other developers were now ready to throw in the towel on amid the rotten economy.

“We identified broken projects as potential opportunities,” O’Brien said. “Let’s see if we can save these projects and fix them.”

Working with a group of savvy development executives he met during his years in the private sector, O’Brien has assembled a grand portfolio of breathtakingly ambitious projects, then set about fixing their flaws to make them work.

He gave a haircut to the ridiculously oversized Government Center Garage redevelopment, cutting back the scale to a still huge, but more manageable 2.4 million square feet.

O’Brien also went to work on the NorthPoint plan in Cambridge, revamping that massive proposal, which features 20 different development parcels, as well and fixing what had been a contentious investment partnership.

And having overseen the development of apartments across the Boston areas, O’Brien and his firm have worked as a consultant on developer John Drew’s big Seaport project, Waterside Place.

The proof is in the pudding, with the first buildings underway at NorthPoint and Waterside and O’Brien’s company having grown to 12 full-time staff members.

Crucially, he has also found a stable of high-powered investors to bankroll his plans, a group that includes Earvin “Magic” Johnson’s Canyon-Johnson investment group, a mammoth union pension fund, and a deep-pocketed European investor.

Changing Development Scene

But timing is also on O’Brien’s side as his star rises over Greater Boston’s booming development scene.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is heading into retirement early next year.

Now, the mayor’s tight circle of developer friends – who have long dominated the building scene in the Hub – is hardly poised to fade away.

Joe Fallon, with Fan Pier and a succession of hotel and apartment high-rises, has helped remake the Seaport while Millennium has transformed what was once the Combat Zone into a thriving district of theaters and luxury residential towers.

But without Menino dictating the development scene in the city, there’s a chance for new blood (read:  O’Brien) to rise as well. (Despite having worked for the mayor for years at the BRA, O’Brien is not one of the mayor’s development buddies. His 1999 exit from the agency was strained, to put it nicely.)

Now there’s certainly competition out there. In fact, there are lots of developers waiting in the wings, some actively disliked by Menino. And you can be sure they are hoping and dreaming they will finally get a chance to actually build something after being forced to sit on their blueprints for years.

Certainly International Place builder Don Chiofaro and his grand Greenway tower plans comes to mind, as well as John Hynes, still pushing doggedly ahead with plans for the multibillion-dollar Seaport Square project.

Blowhards never fared well in Menino’s Boston.

Not O’Brien. Judicious in his public statements, he clearly understands the impact ill-advised comments and boasting can have.

 Of all the developers waiting in the wings, O’Brien has the best combination of savvy, patience and projects with the potential to reshape the area’s urban core.

After all, O’Brien managed to make it in Tom Menino’s Boston – no easy feat.

And now, with the Menino era closing, the former City Hall development chief is poised to do some truly great things.

Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.