CITY OFFERS AID TO HELP SPUR COLLEGE CAMPUS IN ROXBURY

The Wu administration is offering a multimillion-dollar aid package to help jump-start construction on a long-stalled new campus for Franklin Cummings Tech near Nubian Square in Roxbury. The $75 million project depended on the sale of the Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology’s existing campus on Berkeley Street in the South End (left), to developer Related Beal. But that sale has been held up by permitting delays and rising interest rates. Now, Mayor Michelle Wu’s administration is offering a solution to break the logjam: tax breaks for Related Beal and a $4 million grant for the two-year technical school. The city’s aid package consists of at least three elements. First, the BPDA would give Related Beal a tax break for 41 Berkeley — where Related has plans to build roughly 250,000 square feet of housing — that would keep taxes low on the property for 30 years; in return, the BPDA gets a new small minority stake in the parcel. The BPDA would also give $4 million via a “recoverable” grant to Franklin Cummings Tech, to help fund its Nubian Square project. And the agency would waive $745,000 that it would otherwise be owed under a previous agreement because of the change in use proposed for the 41 Berkeley property. The total value of this package is unclear because neither Related nor the BPDA provided a projection for 41 Berkeley’s post-development tax assessment. The provision essentially sets property taxes for 41 Berkeley at $500,000 annually for 10 years and then would increase by the rate of inflation for 19 years after that. It would still be more than the city gets today, because Franklin Cummings Tech is a nonprofit and pays no property taxes there.