Committee questions BRA land appraisal

Yawu Miller

In real estate, location is everything. Thus a duplex condo in the South End can command a higher price than a triple decker on Bowdoin Street.

So when a Boston Redevelopment Authority appraiser valued the vacant lot on Columbus Ave. across from the Boston Police headquarters at a rate five times that of the land in the Fan Pier development, it raised a few eyebrows. After Thomas Welch, a development consultant, e-mailed members of the Roxbury Master Plan Oversight Committee raising his concerns, the matter came before the group’s Monday meeting.

“We’ve got to put together deals that will facilitate development, not RFPs where no one will pick up a packet,” said committee member Dan Richardson.

The committee is a body that was created to ensure that development of vacant land in Roxbury complies with the standards and goals codified in the Roxbury Master Plan, a document that community members created to guide development in Roxbury.

The group has been meeting monthly with community members and BRA officials to produce and review a request for proposals for Parcel 3, as the Columbus Avenue parcel is known, and other lots.

During Monday’s meeting, BRA Director of Planning Kairos Shen said land valuation for parcel 3 was computed using comparable land values elsewhere in Roxbury. The cost of the land, he said, would equal about $8 million for the eight-acre site. Questioned by committee members, Shen said he would bring the BRA appraiser to the next committee meeting on October 3.

“You will realize that this is a fair market rate for Roxbury,” he said.

In an e-mail obtained by the Banner, Welch said the BRA’s valuation of the land would be approximately $106 million. By comparison, the Fan Pier is under agreement for $115 million.

“Note that Fan Pier is 20.5 acres and will result in some 3 million square feet of built space and P3 is 8.71 acres and (as we currently propose) will produce 1.1 million square feet of built space,” Welch wrote in his e-mail.

“This means that P3 is 5 to 6 times as expensive as Fan Pier when it should probably be valued at 1/2 of Fan Pier. Fan Pier reportedly has substantial infrastructure costs, but P3 will have infrastructure costs as well as ‘community benefit’ costs.”

The assessed value of the land is critically important for the success of the parcel’s development for several key reasons. For one, Roxbury residents have requested that the BRA lease the land to a developer and share the proceeds with community-based organizations.

For another, it determines whether any given project is financially feasible. And, as Richardson pointed out, the cost of the land could help determine the cost of other development projects in the area.

“As we set a price for P3, we’re setting a price for every parcel in Roxbury,” Richardson said.

While the cost of the land could be a make-or-break issue for developers, most of Monday’s meeting was dominated by talk of jobs, contracts and equity.

State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson said that language should be inserted into the request for proposals mandating that minority developers have at least 50 percent equity in any development team selected by the BRA.

“This is one of the most significant issues we can address,” she said. “History has shown where we require minority participation, we get it. Where we don’t, we don’t get it.”

The RFP currently requires that at least 60 percent of the construction jobs go to residents of the federally designated Boston Empowerment Zone, an area stretching from South Boston to Mattapan, which includes most of the city’s black population.

She said the mandatory inclusion of black developers would make it more likely that the designated developer will achieve the hiring and contracting goals.

“This is absolutely critical,” she said of the minority equity requirement. “It will make a difference as to whether we’re successful in the jobs piece and the contracting piece.”

Wilkerson pointed to the Parcel 18 project, One Lincoln Plaza and the Crosstown development as examples of project where minority developers had equity roles and were able to provide jobs to people of color.

Wilkerson said that she has requested a copy of the RFP that was issued in the 1980s for the Parcel 18 project, which had a 50 percent minority equity requirement. BRA officials told Wilkerson they are looking for the document, but have been unable to locate it.

The Parcel 18 minority equity language was written in a way that minimized the threat of a lawsuit. Committee members agreed to request that a 50 percent minority equity guideline be inserted into the RFP, regardless of whether BRA officials are able to locate a copy of the Parcel 18 document.