Boston College to Submit IMPA This Fall -- Prior to Submitting New Master Plan

Boston College has recently completed their transaction to purchase the remaining land of the former St. John's Seminary from the Archdiocese of Boston. The purchase also included Bishop Peterson Hall (mid-20th century extension to the historic St. John's Hall) and the Library.

Since these two buildings are not currently part of Boston College's approved Institutional Master Plan from 2000 (as amended with an IMPA in 2006), BC must apply to extend their institutional master plan area to the buildings and allow their occupancy for institutional use. They wish to do some significant interior renovations to both buildings, too.

As a result, BC legal counsel Joe Herlihy announced at Tuesday's BC Task Force meeting that they will be submitting "in the next few weeks" an Institutional Master Plan Amendment to allow renovations of these two buildings and permit their institutional use. He said that BC would not be pursuing an expedited review process, but instead will follow the standard timeline defined in the Article 80 review process. BRA project manager John Fitzgerald said that the initial comment period (following the IMPANF) is 30 days, and the later comment period (following the DPIR) is 60 days, so the full process will take a minimum of three months.

BC's full, 10-year IMP will be filed later in the fall, possibly overlapping a bit with the approval process of the IMPA.

Bishop Peterson Hall will now be used for offices and classrooms of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology, which is re-affiliating with BC; WJST students will continue to reside in Cambridge and commute to the Brighton Campus for classes. The 2006 IMPA approved St. Williams Hall for these WJST offices and classrooms. It appears as though St. Williams Hall will no longer have an approved institutional use during the time period between approval of the upcoming IMPA and the later IMP; their plan is for office space. Housing for the WJST seminarians will also be deferred to the IMP. BC's goal is to get quick approval of a largely renovation project that will likely not be controversial, while deferring possibly controversial projects (that may slow down the approval process) to the IMP.

The WJST has 18 faculty, 15 staff, and 140 students who will be using Bishop Peterson Hall. The current occupants of the building are overflow offices from the Archdiocese's Chancery, who will be moving to Braintree, so there will not be an increase in density of workers between Bishop Peterson and St. John's Halls.

The Library will also be renovated, and will then be jointly used by the St. John's Seminary and the WJST. It requires HVAC mechanical upgrades, code updates, and ADA-compliant updates.


The meeting also included a discussion of the student behavior plan and its enforcement during the first three weekends of the school year. I will defer that information for a future post.

Boston College Details Building Uses for Latest Land Purchase from the Archdiocese

At the BRA's BC Task Force Meeting last night (June 19, 2007), Boston College officials described the land purchase of the remaining St. John's Seminary land (and all but one building).

Boston College will not file their Institutional Master Plan Notification Form (IMPNF) until late August or early September 2007, according to Thomas Keady, Jr., BC VP for Government and Community Affairs. The delay is due to the Archdiocese recently exercising their sale option on most of the remainder of the St. John's Seminary land; while this was expected to happen eventually, the timing appears to have been more rapid than anticipated. The sale is currently slated to be completed around late August, according to Jeanne Levesque of BC's Office of Government and Community Affairs.

In particular, BC will be purchasing Bishop Peterson Hall (but not St. John's Hall), which means that they are planning moving some uses around among buildings on the Brighton Campus. Here's a map from a previous post:

Here's a breakdown of the new uses for buildings on/around the Brighton Campus:

1. St. John's Hall: remain as property owned and operated by St. John's Seminary, although its form of ownership will be re-classified as confdominium unit(s). BC will own the land under and around St. John's Hall, while the Seminary will own the building itself. BC and the Seminary will jointly run a kitchen. St. John's Hall has four floors plus a basement level.
   
2. St. John's Seminary will receive an exclusive easement for parking and access to St. John's Hall. They currently have approximately 40 parking spaces; there was no indication of the number of spaces to be included in the deal.
3. Bishop Peterson Hall will convert to BC ownership and use for offices/classrooms of the Weston Jesuit School of Theology. There will be no residential uses for the building. These offices/classrooms for WJST were originally slated for St. Williams Hall (which BC already owns).
   
4. St. Williams Hall will now be used for academic, administrative, and/or business offices. It sounds like More Hall offices, for example, will now be moved to St. Williams Hall to free up the More Hall site for a new development.
5. St. John's Library will be used jointly between BC and the Seminary; WJST will relocate their library collection into this building.
6. Chancery will remain administative offices for Archdiocese for one year after BC purchases the property, prior to the Archdiocese's move to Braintree. BC's long-range plan shows that the Chancery will eventually be razed to make way for new buildings (e.g., academic) and their new access road into the campus. Ditto for the Creigh Library, as best as I could tell.
7. Parking garage (?) and parking uses will remain for the time being.

Jeanne Levesque also announced that they would have a master plan website go public on July 16, 2007. Tom Keady said that the IMPNF and IMP would be made available on their website. Gerald Autler of the BRA said that BC Task Force meeting minutes will eventually be made available on the BC website; he planned on sending them out electronically to "everyone on his list" in the meantime.

The meeting had a lot more activity going on, though... and that will have to wait for post #2. Unless the A-B TAB beats me to it with their teaser:

"We know BC task force meetings can generate a lot of anger, but last night’s apparently took the cake is word on the street –at least as far as the amount of yelling and screaming it generated. One person apparently even felt the need to call the cops. We’ll have a story later."

Archdiocese Considering Moving Offices from Brighton to Braintree

The Boston Globe ran a front-page, above-the-fold, article in today's paper that the Archdiocese of Boston are in the "final stages of negotiating a deal to move their offices from the campus in Brighton... to a four-story building off route 128 in Braintree..."

Many of us heard unconfirmed reports on Monday that Archdiocese employees at the Chancery are currently packing up their office items, with a move completion targeted before September. The question is: where are they moving the offices?

While the Archdiocese is considering moving their central administration offices to Braintree, they plan to keep the St. John's Seminary itself at the same Brighton location:

"St. John's Seminary will remain at its current location, regardless of the outcome of our assessment of the long-term needs of central administration," said [archdiocesan spokesman Terrence C.] Donilon.

Boston College Vice President for Governmental and Community Affairs Thomas Keady, Jr., has stated publicly several times during the last month that the community can expect certain, additional parts of the Archdiocese property to be sold soon to BC as part of an Archdiocesan sell option within their 2004 purchase and sale contract with BC. Another BC official was heard speculating that the Archdiocese would pack their administrative offices into the St. John's Hall (within the St. John's Seminary buildings)--alongside the St. John's seminarians--but then sell the adjoining Bishop Peterson Hall (and the Chancery) to BC. Here's an old graphic from the St. John's Seminary site:

The Globe story implies that the Archdiocese may no longer be considering moving their administrative offices to St. John's Hall. While the Archdiocese has stated clearly that the seminarians are intended to stay in St. John's Hall, it is unclear whether or not the Archdiocese would sell the building and under what circumstances the seminarians would stay.

The reported sales price for the remaining property is $20 million for the 4.75 acre of the Chancery site, and $40 million for the 13.5 acre of the St. John's Seminary buildings site (and adjoining woods). I am guessing that the library is part of the latter parcel.

Since the Archdiocese and Boston College already have a purchase and sale contract which includes a sell option for these properties and a price, then why would they be in final negotations? My speculation is that they are negotiating sale of part of a parcel specified in the contract, and hence they would have to agree upon the size of the sub-parcel and its price. The likely parcel: selling Bishop Peterson Hall but not St. John's Hall. We'll see.

Note that Boston College's master plans have included buildings sited on the Chancery land not yet sold to them; there is little surprise at this point that it will be sold to BC. The surprise would be if the Archdiocese offices altogether move out of Brighton.

The Boston Herald first broke news of the story last Saturday.

A final note: The Globe's story includes a graphic of the Brighton property already sold, and that which may be sold in the immediate future. The graphic contains two subtle factual errors as to the seller of 196 Foster St (which was actually Virginia Dalton, not the Archdiocese), and the purchase dates of 188 and 196 Foster St (which were both purchased in 2006, not 2004).