City officials are expected to approve General Electric Cos.’ planned headquarters on Fort Point Channel at a Thursday meeting of the Boston Planning and Development Agency.
The BPDA will hold a public hearing and likely vote on the three-building complex at its board meeting Thursday afternoon at City Hall. The plan also needs approval from the city’s zoning board, scheduled for November, but remains on track to break ground early next year and open in 2018.
GE is proposing to spend $200 million renovating two empty warehouses on Necco Court that it plans to buy from Procter & Gamble and constructing a 12-story building on a parking lot next door. The complex would sit alongside Fort Point Channel, and GE has pledged to make the ground floors of buildings open to the public, with exhibits showing the company’s long history of inventions and innovations.
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Since being formally proposed in August, the project has sailed through Boston’s notoriously thorny permitting process, the only speed bump being a brief kerfuffle over an elevated walkway connecting one of the older Necco buildings with a neighboring building on Melcher Street.
Earlier this month, neighbors and preservationists voiced concern about GE’s plan to tear down the bridge. With some nudging from Mayor Martin J. Walsh, GE changed course and agreed to preserve it, at a cost of more than $1 million.
Tim Logan can be reached at tim.logan@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bytimlogan.