Monday night, the Revere City Council approved a $16.5 million bond to settle the eminent domain case for the purchase of the Wonderland site.
The 33-plus acre Wonderland property is the site of the new Revere High School, which is currently under construction and slated to open for students by the beginning of 2029. The council had previously approved a $30.5 million bond for the taking of the property by eminent domain in 2022.
Since 2023, the city has been involved in a lawsuit with the former owners of the property over the total payout for the property. That lawsuit was settled earlier this year.
At Monday night’s council meeting, Mayor Patrick Keefe noted that even with the additional settlement amount, along with about $900,000 in legal fees, the project is still projected to come in at a total cost under the $493 million bond originally approved by the city council.
“This all will still come beneath the $493 million that was already bonded for the whole high school site, but because of language in each bond, the use of each bond needs to be specific to what we tell you that we are borrowing it for,” said Keefe. “The $493 million was borrowed for the construction of the new high school, of that $493 million, about half of it is being paid for out of the MSBA (state school building authority) grant. Then we went further and took a budget reduction of $10 million to take the estimated cost of construction to $483 million.”
Since that budget reduction, the mayor said the city has also seen cost savings with construction bids coming in lower than anticipated.
“The total anticipated savings is around $24 million off of the original $493 million,” said Keefe. “You factor in the $16.5 million (and the $900,000 for legal expenses) and we are still below that $493 million; but each has to have a specific bond.”
Revere finance director Richard Viscay said the city has been planning for a contingency within the budget for the new high school, both for purchasing the land and for construction.
“I also sit on the building committee for the high school, and I think where Mayor Keefe said pretty much everything about savings, I just want to reiterate that we have saved money throughout this project,” said Ward 3 Councillor Anthony Cogliandro. “We are not using what we thought we would need from the contingency funds, and this additional money for the eminent domain costs is not going to cost the city any more money. I was one of the people who assumed that our cost was going to be much higher than it was, and I am very pleased that it is not.”
Council President Anthony Zambuto said the city ended up with a great settlement for the city with the eminent domain case and voted for the $16.5 million bond authorization.
However, Zambuto reiterated his belief that the city should have built the new high school on the site of the current school, and should not have paid $45 million to take property that could have been otherwise developed off the tax rolls.
“The bottom line is that this is an important vote, and I’m going to vote for it, but that doesn’t take away the fact that we made the biggest fiscal mistake in the history of the city,” said Zambuto.