Now that UMass has picked a private partner to redevelop the 20-acre Bayside site, be on the lookout for more land-use news on the Columbia Point peninsula in the coming months.
One of the first puzzle pieces that will likely come into focus this year is a large chunk of the McCormack School property along Mt. Vernon Street. In a vote taken last May, the Boston School Committee authorized BPS to begin a process that could ultimately lead to the city leasing out or selling about 40 percent of the McCormack site to a private partner for re-use.
Unlike the UMass-Bayside deal, however, which sought to capitalize on the molten-hot real estate market to solve the Boston campus’s financial woes, the BPS concept here is to find a private partner to improve an underused tract of land specifically for the benefit of the schoolkids and the local community.
The central target is a playing field that sits between the McCormack School building and St. Christopher’s church, a property owned by the archdiocese of Boston. The land in question — about 40 percent of the McCormack site— is roughly 112,844 square feet in size, according to a BPS estimate.