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© The Boston Herald
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Builders line up for FBI complex
By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
As many as a dozen developers across Boston are competing to build the FBI a new, roughly $100 million Boston headquarters, executives familiar with the bureau’s search said.
FBI officials have inspected various development sites and are now preparing to narrow down the field as they search for a location that meets extensive security needs, said Timothy Pappas, chief executive of Pappas Enterprises, which is among those competing.
In the running are a number of developers with land in South Boston, both in the general vicinity of the city’s new $800 million- plus convention center and directly on the waterfront at the Fan Pier development site.
A finalist could be in place by this fall. The FBI has indicated it wants to move into a new, roughly 300,000-square-foot Boston command complex in 2010, executives said. “Everybody who has got five acres will probably throw their hat in the ring,” Pappas said.“A lease with the federal government is a pretty good lease to have.”
Pappas, which has done extensive residential development in the neighborhood, has submitted a site on Summer Street near the Fargo building now occupied by a pair of industrial buildings.
John Drew, a veteran waterfront developer who teamed up with Fidelity Investments to build out the World Trade Center complex, has also submitted a site, he said. That site is on Summer Street, not far from the convention center.
And Peter Palandjian, head of Intercontinential Real Estate, has put into the mix his own site on D Street, just across from the new convention center.
Also in the running: a site in Andrew Square, where a junkyard now stands, and another location in Charlestown, executives said.
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