The Patrick Administration’s grand plan to dramatically expand rail service at South Station grabbed headlines, but there’s been little mention of a potentially expensive little detail that could hit taxpayers hard in the wallet.
You see, the site where the state Department of Transportation envisions laying nine new tracks just happens to be occupied right now.
The U.S. Postal Service’s massive, 1960s mail sorting plant is probably the biggest building in downtown Boston you never truly noticed, and it just happens to be perched on an extremely valuable and strategically placed tract of land next door to South Station along Fort Point Channel.
Now our nation’s snail mail system may be nearly broke, but don’t think for a minute that the cash-hurting USPS is going to roll over and sell its valuable tract of downtown property to state transportation officials for a song, no matter how noble the cause.
In fact, even as it pushes ahead with plans to shutter massive mail sorting complexes around the country, the postal service has decided to keep its South Station complex.
Seeking Top Dollar
Maybe the South Station complex is truly indispensable, though the USPS’s decision to keep the nearly five-decade-old mail sorting plant was made at the expense of a more modern facility in the suburbs.
In fact, the postal service has long made it clear it needs a more modern, sleek, two-story design instead of the four-story monster it is stuck with right now.
So there is reason to be skeptical, especially given all the real estate posturing and marketing the USPS has done for the past decade around its prime, downtown Boston site.
In fact, postal officials have spent years getting ready for just such a day, touting the value of their 16-acre site in Boston’s Financial District as the site for the next big mega project in the hub.
Big bucks were spent for years to retain the services of the local branch of prominent local real estate firm CB Richard Ellis.
The local brokers hired by the USPS ginned up all sorts of talk about the development potential of the post office’s sprawling tract next to South Station, floating faux plans for millions of square feet of new offices, homes and shops and new towers as well.
Somewhat fanciful, all those trial balloons may simply have been an attempt to establish a top shelf price for the property.
Ditto for the idea the aging South Station mail plant is the best place to consolidate the postal service’s regional operations. Maybe that’s the case, but it also could simply be a way of further upping the ante.
Hey, if you want to buy us out, better come up with a good offer!
Big Bill For Taxpayers?
If so, the bidding is likely to start at $200 million – after all the city assessment, which is typically much lower, is in the $180 million range.
And that’s even before we get to the cost of actually tearing down the 1.4 million square foot behemoth.
Given past practice, postal officials are likely to be seeking a grab bag of other benefits as well.
The past decade has seen the USPS demand not just for top dollar for the South Station site, but a spanking new mail sorting plant at a site a mile away in a more industrial section of South Boston.
That’s not likely to come cheap – we could easily be talking tens of millions more in relocation and construction costs, most likely to be paid for courtesy of Massachusetts taxpayers.
But nothing about this endeavor is cheap – even lining up the assorted state and city permits for the proposed track expansion at South Station will cost a small fortune.
A little pot of federal money – really just $32.5 million – has been set aside for that project.
It’s hard to see any deal happening quickly, if it happens at all – just getting all the different state and city agencies to sign off on a rail expansion could take up to three years, notes Vivien Li, head of the Boston Harbor Association.
But whether it is three years or another ten years, state taxpayers will be the ones who end up footing the bill, and it won’t be pretty.
Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
