Windows and skylights leaking like sieves. Walls and columns painted burnt orange and black. Rusting ventilation systems routinely spewing fluid.
Those are just some of the infrastructure and cosmetic issues at the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center, a sprawling three-level facility built in the late 1980s in the heart of Boston’s Back Bay, that crews are working to remedy.
The public-facing cosmetic changes aim to brighten the Hynes’s expansive interior, with fresh paint and carpeting and a color scheme of creams, light blues, and mints rather than burnt orange and dark olive green. Some of the most pressing work, however, has been out of sight of the general public, such as replacing power and air equipment.
It’s part of a five-year plan to address critical building systems and deferred maintenance, with $117 million contracted to spend on upgrades to the heating, air ventilation, and electrical systems, building envelope, and overall accessibility.
The investment represents a major pivot from a prior state plan, under former governor Charlie Baker, to shutter the 881,000-square-foot facility and instead direct investment toward South Boston’s Thomas M. Menino Convention & Exhibition Center. Baker pursued a sale of the Hynes both before and following the COVID-19 pandemic’s upending of business travel and work patterns, saying it could open up a key corner of the neighborhood with 5.6 acres of redevelopment potential.
Governor Maura Healey’s administration has taken the opposite approach. In 2024, the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority generated $1.2 billion in economic impact, along with another $63 million in tax revenue, said John Barros, the newly named interim executive director of the MCCA.
“We are an engine that is incredibly productive,” said Barros, who was the city’s economic development chief under former mayor Martin J. Walsh. “We want to continue that engine.”
Barros and MCCA executives recently led neighborhood representatives and political leaders, including state Representative Jay Livingstone and City Councilor Sharon Durkan, along with Meg Mainzer-Cohen of the Back Bay Association and Conrad Armstrong of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, on a tour of the ongoing and planned improvements.
“It’s amazing how much better the place looks with new carpet and new lights,” said Livingstone, whose district includes Back Bay.
Baker’s exploration of a $500 million expansion of the South Boston convention center at the expense of the Hynes prompted furor among many Back Bay businesses, who asserted the Hynes is part of the neighborhood’s economic lifeblood. Livingstone said hoteliers and business owners alike expressed significant concerns about a potential closure. The investments in deferred maintenance are “long overdue,” he said.
“This is night and day from the last administration,” Livingstone said. “The Hynes has always been an economic driver in Back Bay. So many businesses are attached to the Hynes, and it’s great to see it treated with such care and investment.”
So far, the MCCA has swapped 15 of 23 mechanical package and air units, taking the massive coils used to heat and cool the building and replacing them with upgraded infrastructure that doesn’t spew fluids all over, said John Donahue, the MCCA’s chief of operations and capital projects.
“All of that infrastructure — that was a rusting behemoth before,” Donahue said. “My guys up there were like the little Dutch boy, trying to put their fingers in the coil, trying to keep it from (leaking) while the client below doesn’t even know about it.”
One of the key renovations involves replacing 25,000 square feet of single-pane glass, much of which rises more than 30 feet facing out to Boylston Street and “leaks like a sieve,” Donahue said. This summer, crews will replace skylights along the ballroom corridor with a more energy-efficient glass that better reflects heat.
Donahue said he has promised the MCCA board that, by 2029, the facility will be at a point where a “catastrophic closure” won’t be likely due to a building systems failure. He’d like to get to a point where the property can start planning out its infrastructure upgrades proactively rather than having to react to a problem.
Still, the first two contracts — some $50 million for a firm called Barr & Barr of Worcester to handle mechanical infrastructure upgrades, and around $67 million for Boston’s Shawmut Design and Construction to tackle deferred maintenance — represent just the first wave of investment.
“This year was incredibly important for the Hynes,” Barros said. “There is a real tension in this. It’s not like we can close down and just fix the place.”
Indeed, the Hynes has an event booked out as far as 2045, with the National Kidney Association planning a conference 19 years out.
Focusing on the unglamorous work of out-of-sight infrastructure improvements is key to keeping the Hynes successful, Durkan said.
“It’s not easy to prioritize the things that people can’t see,” Durkan said. “We can’t rest on our laurels in the Back Bay and in the city of Boston and in the Commonwealth. We have to keep visioning and getting people here.”
Catherine Carlock can be reached at catherine.carlock@globe.com. Follow her @bycathcarlock.