Over the summer, as public funding for the city’s ongoing construction at White Stadium became a key issue in her re-election bid, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu promised to give an updated cost estimate for the controversial project “later this calendar year.” But with just weeks left in the year, and amid mounting pressure from critics and the City Council, Wu’s office signaled it may not release that detailed information until 2026.
Boston officials last gave an estimate for how much the city will spend on the hotly debated project more than a year ago, when they said it would cost taxpayers $91 million. Wu acknowledged months ago, though, that the final cost to the city will likely exceed that figure due to inflation and the rising cost of labor and materials. She pledged to release an updated cost estimate “later this calendar year,” because not all of the construction bids for the project were finalized. But as of this week, Wu’s office has still not offered an update on the project’s final cost, and a spokesperson for the mayor said Wednesday that the city still needs to evaluate contractors and award remaining bids in “early 2026.”
As of Tuesday, the city had spent $12 million on demolition and site work for the project, and designated $76 million to contractors for further construction, city spokesperson Emma Pettit said. It was not immediately clear which steps of the construction process are covered by those contracts, and what bids have not been awarded yet.
“After more than forty years of failed starts, White Stadium is being rebuilt as a state-of-the-art facility for BPS student athletes and the community, open year-round,” Pettit said in a statement. “We are excited to be underway.”
Renovating White Stadium, in partnership with new professional women’s soccer team Boston Legacy FC, has been a controversial project for years. Wu and the project’s supporters argue it is a rare opportunity to give Boston Public Schools students and Boston residents access to a top-of-the-line sports facility, while splitting the cost with a private entity and bringing professional women’s sports to Boston. But opponents argue Franklin Park and the surrounding residential neighborhoods are not an appropriate home for a professional sports stadium.
Now, pressure is mounting for Wu to release more information.
City Councilor Julia Mejia and other critics of the project rallied at City Hall on Wednesday to protest how the Wu administration has handled the overhaul. Mejia also filed a resolution Wednesday demanding that the Wu administration release an updated cost estimate, though it did not include a deadline.
“We’re operating with an outdated figure,” Mejia said. “We cannot govern responsibly without real numbers. We cannot ask residents to trust a project with a price tag that is still unclear. And we cannot move forward with a proposal of this scale without a full, transparent process that lets us know what the city is on the hook for.”
The council voted unanimously in favor of Mejia’s resolution, though some councilors spoke in support of Wu’s vision for White Stadium.
The project to overhaul the more than 75-year-old stadium, which had been in disrepair for decades, would completely rebuild the facility save for one historic wall. The redevelopment would provide a new home for Boston Public Schools athletics and community events. It will also serve as the home stadium for the professional women’s team, which signed a lease agreement with the city to use the site for a maximum of 20 games and 20 practices a year.
The project has drawn intense scrutiny and controversy over the public-private partnership behind the rebuild, and its price tag, which has risen considerably over the past two years.
Investors initially proposed $30 million of renovations to the site in July 2023. By March 2024, the city had bookmarked $50 million for its portion; as of last December, the cost estimate had climbed to $91 million.
The city is only paying for about half of the project, which is expected to cost more than $200 million. Boston Legacy FC, the other major funder of the renovation, has also not provided a recent update for how much it will spend.
The project was a flashpoint in this year’s mayoral race. Wu’s chief challenger, Josh Kraft, claimed in June that the city had projected the White Stadium redevelopment could cost $170 million in taxpayer dollars, citing sources inside City Hall.
Wu strongly rejected his claim, but acknowledged the number Kraft quoted came from an internal “disaster planning” projection for how much the project could cost the city in an “absolute worst case scenario.”
“It does not reflect anything that’s grounded in reality,” Wu said in June on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio.”
The City of Boston has denied public records requests from the Globe that sought internal cost projections and the full range of cost scenarios the city calculated for its part of the public-private project.
Niki Griswold can be reached at niki.griswold@globe.com. Follow her @nikigriswold.