UMass Boston to lease Accordia space for mixed-use development

View of part of the UMass Boston campus, which is on Boston Harbor.

View of part of the UMass Boston campus, which is on Boston Harbor.

This is from The New England Council (newenglandcouncil.com)

“UMass Boston announced that its board of trustees and building authority have unanimously agreed to lease the Bayside Expo Center site to Accordia Partners. This deal will see the 20-acre site developed into 3.5 million square feet of mixed-use space.

“At $235 million, the partnership between UMass Boston and Accordia Partners will provide funding for the school as well as the opportunity to develop the space. The university will engage its community to determine the priorities for the development of the site. The space will include academic, life-science, residential, and retail space, and will create public access to the waterfront.

“Interim Chancellor Katherine Newton said, ‘Part of what I hope we can do is to see what kinds of industries arrive at Bayside and then build academically toward them, so that there’s a natural bridge between our students, faculty and those industries. . . We’re not going to make any decisions right now about what’s going to be teed up.”’