Newly available Widett Circle site could fetch top dollar

[Teamdriver]

Three years after it abruptly surfaced as Boston’s next big development hot spot, a key piece of Widett Circle is on the market.

The New Boston Food Market this week will put nearly 20 acres sandwiched between South Boston and the South End up for sale, kicking off what real estate analysts expect will be a fierce bidding war for a prime piece of land near downtown.

Bound by busy roads and rail lines, Widett Circle has been home to two dozen meat and seafood wholesalers for nearly a half-century but had been largely overlooked within Boston’s real estate world until emerging as the centerpiece location of Boston’s 2024 Olympic bid. With the Olympics failure, the property has surged to the top of the development agenda in a city desperate for places to grow.

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[BandA]

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So, New Boston Food Mart is 20 acres. Will the MBTA pay 200M for a storage yard? How much did/do they get from Harvard for Beacon Park, which is almost as valuable. Even with an air-rights deal it is going to be $$$$$

I'm betting that the MBTA doesn't get Widett Circle as a storage yard & their CR logistics get screwed up for the next 50 years.

How much the site might fetch for it is hard to guess, Sayles said. Just across the Southeast Expressway from Widett, the 5.6-acre site of the Boston Flower Exchange sparked a bidding war in 2015 that sources say topped $40 million, though no specific price has been revealed. Larger — and already-permitted — sites such as 12 acres of Seaport Square and a 42-acre section of NorthPoint in East Cambridge sold for $359 million and $291 million, respectively.