Archdiocese to Sell Brighton Site to BC $65m Price Tag for 18 Acres; Offices to Move to Braintree, by Michael Paulson, Boston Globe, May 25, 2007

Archdiocese to Sell Brighton Site to BC
$65m Price Tag for 18 Acres; Offices to Move to Braintree

By Michael Paulson
Boston Globe
May 25, 2007

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/05/25/archdiocese_to_sell_brighton_site_to_bc/

Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley, continuing an aggressive and dramatic restructuring of the region's largest religious denomination, agreed yesterday to sell the Archdiocese of Boston's remaining acreage in Brighton to Boston College for $65 million.

The sale of the land where the archdiocese has been headquartered since the 1920s comes after a four-year period in which O'Malley has closed one-sixth of the region's parishes and more than a dozen schools, sold the mansion in which all of his predecessor cardinals lived, replaced most of the archdiocese's leadership team, and agreed to transfer the area's Catholic hospitals to a national chain.

Above, the Braintree office building where archdiocese administrators will be moving.

O'Malley said yesterday that the changes will leave the archdiocese stronger as it prepares to celebrate its bicentennial next year.

"Certainly our commitment to the city is ongoing, particularly to the needs of those who are disenfranchised, but by shoring up our financial situation we will be in the better position to minister," O'Malley said in a brief interview at the Old State House, where he was giving a lunchtime speech to downtown Catholics. "And it's a Catholic institution that's taking over; it's not as though it is going to be used for a purpose that isn't part of the educational mission of the church."

Under the deal announced yesterday, the archdiocese is planning to move its 200 administrative workers from Brighton to Braintree, to a four-story office building owned by billionaire developer Thomas J. Flatley, who has been a major archdiocesan benefactor.

Boston College, which had previously spent $107 million to purchase 46 acres from the archdiocese in Brighton, will use the additional 18 acres that would be acquired under the latest transaction to expand its campus across Commonwealth Avenue.

"Given the density of our campus, we have long hoped to acquire additional space to help meet our academic and administrative needs," BC spokesman Jack Dunn said yesterday.

The university faces intense scrutiny from neighbors, some of whom are leery of the traffic and noise associated with college students. Dunn said BC has been working with the Allston- Brighton Task Force, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and various neighborhood groups to discuss its plans.

The Boston Archdiocese plans to retain St. John's Seminary.

The archdiocese is retaining only one building on the Brighton campus, St. John's Hall, where its seminary has been located since 1883. The other half of the seminary's current home, called Bishop Peterson Hall, will be sold to the college, as will the seminary library.

"It's kind of the beginning of a new era in many ways," said Thomas H. O'Connor, university historian at BC and the author of "Boston Catholics." "But looked at more closely, it's no longer as unusual or as radical a move as it once might have been seen, and it might provide more modern facilities and better quarters for work that's now done by e-mail and fax machine."

The agreement announced yesterday requires approval by the Vatican. The archdiocese said it is hoping the deal will close by Aug. 1, but that, under an arrangement with BC, it would have until July 2008 to move.

In 2004, BC agreed to pay $60 million if the archdiocese sold the university all its remaining land; officials said yesterday that the higher price, for land that does not include the seminary, was the result of a tough negotiation between BC, which has a $1.5 billion endowment, and the archdiocese, which runs an annual operating deficit.

The archdiocese said it would use the money in part to pay off a line of credit from the Knights of Columbus, to shore up the fund for retired and sick priests, and to help pay for deferred maintenance of church buildings.

The move from the central city of a diocese to a suburb is unusual but not unprecedented for the Catholic Church in the United States. The Archdiocese of Washington's main offices are in Hyattsville, Md., and earlier this month the Archdiocese of Los Angeles announced that it will sell its central administrative building to help fund settlements in abuse cases.

The Braintree property is a four-story, 140,000-square-foot building constructed nine years ago at 66 Brooks Drive, just off Route 128. The archdiocese said that it will run a shuttle from the building to the Quincy/Adams T station and that there is ample parking. The archdiocese would not disclose the terms of the deal with Flatley, and he did not return phone calls.

The archdiocese is only moving administrators to Braintree. The seat of the archdiocese will remain the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, in Boston's South End, and Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley will continue to reside at the cathedral rectory. The archdiocese will continue to maintain its social service operations, parishes, and schools in the city. There are also two Catholic universities, Boston College and Emmanuel College, and two Caritas Christi hospitals, St. Elizabeth's and Carney, in the city.

Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.