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For generations, Massachusetts built its courthouses and owned them. That is about to change — and the change is going to be very good to Conan Harris, the husband of Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley.On July 2, the state's Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance picked a private team, Liberty Junction, to build a new Regional Justice Center at 125 Liberty St. — a courthouse pegged at roughly $600 million — and lease it back to the Commonwealth. Not for a few years — for an initial 40, with options stretching it to as long as 60. Rent runs at least $30 million a year. Over the full term that is on the order of $2 billion — more than three times what the building costs to put up — for a courthouse the public pays for and never owns. When the lease finally ends, the landlord keeps it. One of the people on the landlord's side of that deal is Conan Harris. ...Here is where a curious deal becomes a pattern. In roughly seven years, Harris has gone from a $93,000-a-year Boston City Hall job to a run of ventures that all move on public money or public approvals.Mass Daily News reported last year that the Boston Planning & Development Agency — under Mayor Michelle Wu — handed Harris's development firm a stake in a 400-unit megaproject on public land, turning city parking lots into a private development over neighbors' objections. His consulting firm has also carried a contract with the city's own Office of Police Accountability and Transparency. And the family's finances have drawn scrutiny before: Pressley and Harris are worth an estimated $8 million. ...
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Topic: Rep. Pressley's husband set to profit in lavish $2 billion Western Mass. courthouse deal — all on th (Read 27 times)
