The Baker administration is moving ahead with plans to redevelop the Charles F. Hurley Building in Boston by leasing the entire property to a private development partner that would handle the planning, financing, and construction of a project to "leverage the location's untapped real estate value."
The Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance announced Thursday that it is launching the formal process of finding and selecting, through a competitive process, a developer to partner with. First round offering materials will be released next week and DCAMM said it expects to make a selection in the coming months.
The 327,000 square-foot building owned by the government and opened in 1971 houses a variety of state offices, but it has become costly to maintain and is in need of major renovations, according to the Baker administration. The Hurley Building is situated on a 3.25-acre site bounded by Cambridge, New Chardon, and Staniford streets not far from the State House.
"This is an exciting project for the Commonwealth and a tremendous opportunity to further enhance the economic vibrancy of Downtown Boston," DCAMM Commissioner Carol Gladstone said. "This project will ensure we better utilize an asset that is not meeting the needs of the Commonwealth or local residents and it will also serve as an opportunity to showcase the approach to our Future of Work initiative."
The project was first proposed in October 2019 and DCAMM said it has spent the last year and a half talking to neighbors, stakeholders and others to develop design guidelines and expectations, "including a preference that redevelopment proposals prioritize adaptive reuse or rehabilitation of the existing building."
In 2019, the administration said the plan was to have a developer build out modern office space for public use that the state would control long-term with the intention of moving most, if not all, of the 675 employees who were then working in the building back to that location. DCAMM had originally hoped to select a development partner in the summer of 2020, which would have put the project completion date in 2025.
