The Massachusetts Department of Transportation wants to move its headquarters across town, aiming to help spur development in Roxbury.
The plan would relocate the agency’s staff and meeting rooms from a large building next to Boston Common, and set the center of decision-making for the state’s roads and rails in a new development planned across Tremont Street from the Boston Police Department headquarters.
"The intention behind all of this is to create the kind of transformation in the community that the current state transportation building did in the Theater District," said Assistant Transportation Secretary of Communications Cyndi Roy Gonzalez. Gonzalez said if the agreement works out, MassDOT would "sell the entire transportation building," and would be required by law to sell to the highest bidder.
There were rumblings over the building’s potential sale in the fall when the Legislature and Gov. Deval Patrick agreed to a law authorizing the Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance to transfer ownership of the building to the Department of Transportation.
At the time, former Transportation Secretary Richard Davey said the building could be sold to a developer, though he said the Patrick administration would not do that. "I think that kind of a transaction would be very difficult to pull off, but I think the next administration may decide to get into it," Davey said in October.
The planned sale was reported Thursday morning by the Boston Globe, which said negotiations to bring MassDOT to Roxbury have been going on for several months. The Boston Redevelopment Board owns the 7.25-acre site and the BRA will hear a proposal Thursday evening to change the development designation of P3 Partners to develop the site, to allow for inclusion of a new transportation building.
Plans for the site have called for 300 residential units, a 200-unit extended stay hotel, a new National Center for Afro-American Artists Museum, and more than 600,000 square feet of retail and office space.
The site is walking distance to Ruggles Station and Roxbury Crossing along the Orange Line and Roxbury Community College. Gonzalez said it would give people in the neighborhood an investment they "need and deserve."
MassDOT would sell the transportation building, but would seek to negotiate a land swap with the BRA. Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has set goals to build substantially more housing in Boston to take some of the pressure off housing prices.
Gonzalez said MassDOT has not spoken to potential buyers.
City assessors estimate MassDOT’s current headquarters property is worth about $121 million.
Gov. Deval Patrick, during a radio appearance Thursday, indicated plans to sell the building have been in the works. "We’re working hard to finish a few things. You see in the news today, actually ahead of when we’re quite ready to announce it, is an effort to reestablish a new state transportation building in a neighborhood that would benefit from that economic lift," Patrick said.
