For one of the most visible and accessible parts of Boston, the parcel where Kneeland Street crosses the Big Dig tunnel entrance has decidedly humble uses: the headquarters for the state Department of Transportation's metropolitan Boston district, and a Veolia steam plant that feeds pipes heating dozens of downtown Boston skyscrapers.
Now the city and state are moving to take bids to redevelop the 5.5 acre site, and they're thinking big - very big.
"You're talking about 2 million, potentially 2 million square feet of developable space on this site," Gov. Charlie Baker said Wednesday. "There are a lot of things you can do with 2 million square feet."
In comparison, the John Hancock Tower in the Back Bay is just under 2 million square feet. The addresses of the two sites being put out for bid are 165 and 185 Kneeland Street, about a three-minute walk from South Station.
Mayor Marty Walsh said there will be extensive conversations with residents of Chinatown, the Leather District, and the South End about what they want here, what mix of "housing, economic development, infrastructure, buildings, office space, to really kind of energize and make use of the land."
Walsh said he considers the location a key to helping the city meet its long-term goal of 53,000 new housing units to meet growing population and demand.
French energy giant Veolia owns the steam plant and plans to replace it with a more efficient, less polluting boiler plant built underground, beneath the future development.
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The Kneeland Street site is just one of multiple state-owned parcels in Boston that Baker's now offering the city for housing and jobs, with others in Jamaica Plain, Mattapan, and other neighborhoods of Boston. Many have been vacant or underused for decades.
"This is about inertia," Baker said. "I mean, these parcels sit there because, for one reason or another, there's no proactive strategy to move them and to do something with them."
The state and city plan their first community meeting on the Boston project on March 2 at 6 p.m. at 185 Kneeland Street. Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack said she hopes to officially offer the site to bidders before the end of the year after citizen reactions have shaped a plan for what to build there.
With videographer Anthony Bisceglia
