Boston's Resilient Buildings Plan
We're making investments to modernize our facilities and better deliver City services and programming to our residents.
From libraries, to fire stations, to BCYF community centers and schools, the City of Boston manages more than 350 buildings across the City that are vital for many of the services we provide. Years of deferred maintenance on key facility infrastructure like boilers, heating, ventilation, and cooling, often results in a detrimental impact to service, or worse, a complete shutdown of services. To break this cycle, new investments will ensure that our buildings are resilient and modernized to keep running for years to come. Boston’s Resilient Buildings Plan will expand our property management workforce, scale up our preventative maintenance practices, and prepare us for a better long-term capital planning schedule to modernize our facilities.
Boston’s Buildings
Boston’s BuildingsThe BCYF building portfolio includes 23 stand-alone community centers and many other centers that are embedded within Boston Public Schools. These facilities include gyms, pools, fitness centers, computer labs, and more.
The Boston Fire Department (BFD) manages fire houses across the City, as well as training facilities on Moon Island and BFD Headquarters, and other specialized facilities.
The Boston Police Department manages 16 facilities which include neighborhood stations, police headquarters, and other supportive facilities.
The Boston Public Health Commission manages multiple properties including the Mattapan River Street Campus, the Albany Street Campus. These properties house a variety of social and health services.
The Boston Public Library network includes 25 branches across the City as well as the historic Central Library in Copley Square. Each location is a civic hub offering WiFi, citizenship information, computer access, and collections.
Boston Public Schools manages over 130 buildings. In 2022, Mayor Wu launched the Green New Deal for Boston Public Schools to develop a long-term facilities action plan. Boston’s Resilient Buildings Plan applies learnings from BPS to the rest of the City’s portfolio.
The Public Works Department manages maintenance facilities, garages, and salt sheds across the City as well as the central Public Works facility at Frontage Road.
The Parks and Recreation Department manages field houses and maintenance facilities in parks across the City, as well as other buildings such as the Parkman Bandstand and Frog Pond Pavilion on Boston Common, the East Boston Stadium, and the Jamaica Pond Boathouse.
Property Management oversees more than 20 multi-purpose properties and office buildings. The portfolio includes a wide range of building types including historic sites, archival warehouses, senior centers, City service centers, and more.
Action Plan
We’re committed to supporting, funding, and allocating the resources necessary to revamp and re-energize the buildings that serve our vibrant Boston communities every day. Here’s how we’ll make this plan a reality:
- Increasing Staffing Capacity and Making Concrete Financial Investments: The FY24 budget allocates nearly $1.7 million dollars in new facilities maintenance positions and maintenance contract funding. These investments will significantly scale up our ability to maintain our facilities. Seven new positions are largely dedicated to maintaining our community centers.
- Detailed Assessment of our Facilities: Similar to Mayor Wu’s Green New Deal for Boston Public Schools, we intend to commission a specialized firm with expertise in complex facilities to conduct a Facilities Condition Assessment (FCA), a thorough inspection of the major components of each City building to produce a dataset of information about the conditions of each property. The FCA will also provide a list of recommendations for the best way to repair, replace, and renovate City buildings for the years ahead in order to get ahead of major issues and disruptions.
- Informing Long-term Capital Planning and Future Facilities’ Budget Requests: The data provided from this assessment will help generate insight on the buildings that are in most need of attention. With the help of Asset Essentials, a property management software platform that tracks work orders and capital projects, we will be able to utilize this data to inform smarter long-term planning and ensure longevity of our facilities across the city. The platform will use live data from our buildings to forecast expected costs in the future which will support critical budget requests in a data-driven manner.
