January 22, 2025
An image from a presentation in July 2023 shows the current conditions along the Columbia Road waterfront and the former Bayside Expo Center lots that are slated for re-development in the Dorchester Bay City proposal. Image courtesy Boston Planning Dept./Accordia Partners
A group of tenants in the Harbor Point Apartment community and their landlord— the Corcoran Jennison Companies— have filed an appeal to the state’s Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) challenging that agency’s decision to grant a key permit to the developers of the Dorchester Bay City project on the site of the former Bayside Expo Center in Dorchester.
The abutters’ appeal, which contends that the project’s application to the state was “premature” and “flawed,” could further delay the complicated waterfront redevelopment project that has been in the works since 2018 and has been slowed by regulatory and financial challenges.
The letter to MassDEP, sent on Jan. 6, was followed by a letter to Mayor Wu and Gov. Healey from a longtime Harbor Point tenant leader asking them to intervene on behalf of residents and arguing that Accordia and its partner— the UMass Building Authority— have not followed through on promises to mitigate concerns raised by the abutters.
Their concerns range from roadway access to Day Boulevard to fears that the new construction on the site might exacerbate coastal flooding that has already been a problem in the Harbor Point development.
Above, a rendering depicts how the Dorchester Bay City campus may look once fully built-out as approved by the city's Planning Dept. Image courtesy Accordia Partners/Boston Planning Dept.
A spokesperson for MassDEP confirmed that the agency had received the appeal, which challenges a Dec. 16 “Consolidated Written Determination” that cleared the way for a key permit —commonly referred to as a Waterways permit— to be issued. The recommendation was an important victory for the Dorchester Bay City proponents at Accordia, a Boston-based company led by Richard Galvin and Kirk Sykes.
“A presiding officer in MassDEP’s Office of Appeals and Dispute Resolution will be assigned and will work with the parties on an adjudicatory schedule,” said Fabienne Alexis, a spokesperson for MassDEP.
While such appeals are fairly common in large-scale re-development projects— and may not ultimately result in a reversal of the permit— this one could stall and further complicate Accordia’s attempt to finalize its financing plan and begin actual construction at the 32-acre site on the Columbia Point peninsula. The review of the abutters’ appeal could take months to complete.
The DBC project, estimated as a $5 billion investment over 10-plus years, has been in the planning stages for almost seven years. The bulk of the new construction would be centered on roughly 20 acres of land owned by UMass, which acquired the former Bayside Expo parcels in 2008. The university has agreed to lease the site to Accordia Partners in a 99-year lease that could yield the UMass system between $192.5 and $235 million, according to filings with city and state regulators.
In a statement responding to The Reporter’s request for comment, a spokesperson for Accordia Partners said they were “disappointed by the suit,” particularly given the “proactive, comprehensive, and forward-looking approach the Accordia team took in creating an environmentally sustainable project.”
The 110-page appeal, prepared by attorney Dylan Sanders from the Boston law firm Severidge & Diamond PC, urges that the MassDEP “vacate and reverse” its December decision to recommend that the DBC Waterways program application be approved. It asks the agency for “further review, analysis, and findings” on the project’s impacts to a series of issues that the Harbor Point group argue will adversely impact them specifically, from roadway access to coastal flooding that they worry will worsen when the DBC site is built out in the coming years.
It reads, in part: “The stakes for both the DBC Project and the neighborhood are also heightened by ongoing sea level rise, coastal stormwater surges, and flooding, which disproportionately impact the neighborhood in general and Petitioner Harbor Point Apartments in particular.”
Many of the arguments laid out in the appeal were also central to a Jan. 17 letter from Orlando Perilla, the chairman and CEO of the Harbor Point Community Task Force, Inc., a group that includes scores of longtime tenants in the mixed-income apartment community that is primarily owned by the Corcoran Jennison Companies organization, which also owns the nearby Doubletree Hotel and the Bayside Office Center, a five-story building that is adjacent to the Bayside Expo Center property.
The Dorchester Reporter is a tenant in the Bayside Office Center where the offices of the Corcoran Jennison Companies are located, along with the state’s Registry of Vital Statistics, a state Lottery office, and some departments of the University of Massachusetts.
In his seven-page letter, Perilla frames the MassDEP appeal— and his request for Wu and Healey’s intervention— as “the final opportunity to ensure that the development is equitable, resilient, and aligned community well-being.”
Perilla notes that the Harbor Point community has “always expressed qualified support” for DBC but alleges that Accordia Partners and the UMBA “have not followed through on their multiple promises to address critical requirements we need to extend our unqualified support.”
Perilla makes specific reference to four key areas of concern. The first is “vehicular connectivity” between the Harbor Point compound and Day Boulevard, which Perilla says both UMass and their development partner had committed to including in their project plans. Perilla claims that his task force offered support for DBC’s review by the Boston Planning Dept. specifically after receiving assurances that a cut-through road connecting Harbor Point residents to Day Boulevard would be part of the plan.
“This never happened!” Perilla writes. “[We] relied on DCB’s written commitment to lend our voice of support for DBC at their BPDA Planning Approval hearing. Accordia’s lack of good faith in securing our support was beyond anything we have ever experienced and should not be allowed to stand.”
Another key plank of the appeal pivots on Harbor Point’s vulnerability to coastal flooding and its fear that the DBC project might worsen an already precarious situation. Perilla also asks for the development team—and UMass in particular— to commit to a Harbor Point proposal to re-purpose a currently vacant parcel on Mount Vernon Street— known as R2— into a “community recreational area,” including a soccer field, basketball courts, and playground.”
In addition, Perilla makes the case for a mitigation fund to specifically benefit the Harbor Point tenants. “To date, Accordia and UMBA have designated generous funding commitments to organizations with tenuous connections to the Columbia Point peninsula, while their primary abutter— the residents of Harbor Point— were not mentioned in their MEPA filing when they discussed their plans to address mitigation and community benefit.”
He concludes: “Accordia’s repeated failure to honor its commitments— including promises to formalize these agreements in a Memorandum of Agreement— demonstrates a pattern of disregard that demands regulatory intervention.”
In their response to The Reporter, a spokesperson for the Accordia team said the Dorchester Bay City project, when complete, “will serve as a model for resiliency and open space planning.
“The public/private partnership between DBC, City of Boston, Department of Conservation and Recreation, and other expert public agencies resulted in a plan that will provide hugely important resilience measures and are a key component of the City’s overall resiliency strategy,” the statement continued.
“Our proposal for raising the site and managing stormwater is not only best in class, it provides comprehensive protection for the surrounding neighborhood and nearby residential properties,” the spokesperson noted while adding:
“The commitment to open space is unprecedented, with 19.7 acres of publicly accessible open space available across the site, including a new 2.7 acre green space adjacent to Dorchester Shores Reservation adjacent to the DCR Dorchester Shores Reservation.
“These environmental, resiliency, and open space benefits are part of a $150 million package of public benefits that includes transportation improvements (both infrastructure and public transit), workforce training, housing, and more.”
If built out fully to plans approved by the BPDA in 2023, the DBC campus would include 21 buildings with a mix of office space, labs, and restaurant space and roughly 8.3 acres of new open space. It also would include 1,950 residential apartment units, with 20 percent deemed affordable.
