But the night did not go as Chieppo may have hoped. After he outlined the governor’s proposal to move approximately 400 human service employees to offices within a half-mile radius of Dudley Square, abuse came raining down on Chieppo.

Roxbury activists and elected officials said Romney’s proposal was a retreat from a plan to bring the Department of Public Health offices to the long-vacant Ferdinand furniture buildings in the heart of Dudley Square.

“Does this mean the commitment made by the Legislature to the Ferdinand site is being abandoned by the governor?” asked Sen. Dianne Wilkerson.

Five years ago, the Legislature passed Wilkerson’s bill authorizing then-Governor Paul Cellucci to consolidate the Boston area’s DPH offices at the Ferdinand site.

Business owners and activists had pinned their hopes on the renovation of the Ferdinand building as a keystone development in Dudley Square. The DPH move was expected to bring over 1,000 state employees to the square each day, stimulating the struggling business district.

But after years of inaction by Republican governors Cellucci, Acting Governor Jane Swift and Romney, the time-frame to negotiate an extended lease apparently lapsed. Further state legislation would have been needed to revive it.

In negotiations beginning last fall, Romney administration and Boston Redevelopment Authority officials, legislators and Roxbury activists continued to search for a way to move state employees into the Ferdinand.

This time, the plan was for 100,000 square feet of office space, down from the original 185,000. The board of Boston’s Empowerment Zone, half of whose members are appointed by the mayor, was prepared to allocate over $10 million in federal money to the project.

But Romney was unwilling to commit. His representatives said that the $29 per-square-foot lease asked for by the building owners, activists and the BRA was too much.

That’s when the Romney administration decided to expand the scope of the project to include buildings within a half-mile radius of Dudley. On May 25, the Executive Office for Administration and Finance issued a request for proposals for property owners within that radius wishing to lease their space to the state.

“If we had our choice, we would go to the Ferdinand,” Chieppo told the 12th Baptist Church gathering, which was organized by City Councilor Chuck Turner and state legislators. “We’d need to do this at market rate and we didn’t feel that we could get that specifically at the Ferdinand building.”

Chieppo noted two buildings in Boston that would rent space for $22 and $28 per square foot respectively.

But meeting attendees said that those buildings Chieppo mentioned do not require renovations, which drive up the cost, and that the state pays as much as $50 a square foot for office space elsewhere in Boston.

“We don’t want something else,” said Mereta Walker, a seven-year resident of Shawmut Avenue. “We want [the Ferdinand] building, because that building being empty stops up development in the rest of the neighborhood.”

Attendees questioned the governor’s motives for refusing to commit to the Ferdinand.

Rumors are swirling that state employees have told the administration they do not want to move into Dudley, a predominantly black neighborhood and the site of two recent homicides.

Chieppo said he was unaware of any such complaints. But he said that the half-mile radius would extend across Melnea Cass Boulevard into Lower Roxbury, an industrial zone between Roxbury proper and the much more affluent South End.

Meeting participants issued a series of demands to Romney: that he withdraw the request for proposals and immediately sit down with BRA representatives and elected officials to discuss how to proceed with the development.

But Romney declined to rescind the request for proposals, which gives developers until November to reply.

“The governor is committed to bringing jobs to Dudley Square, so we will continue with the RFP process,” said Romney Deputy Press Secretary Nicole St. Peter on Monday, six days after the meeting.