The Chicago company that owns parcel where WLVI used to be on Morrissey Boulevard is asking a judge to throw out one of two suits by a Boston developer over failed plans to build two 18-story apartment buildings there, charging the developer simply failed to get the project started by the time its purchase-and-sale agreement expired.
In a motion to dismiss in Land Court, POB Capital denied Copper Mill’s assertions that it tried to weasel out of the deal after realizing the 2.2-acre parcel was worth a lot more than the $67.5 million it originally agreed to accept for it once the Boston Planning Department approved the 754-apartment complex last August. Instead, it charges, it’s Copper Mill that’s doing the weaseling – first because it was unable to come up with the money by the time a purchase-and-sale agreement expired on June 30 of this year and then through its Land Court suit seeking to have a job order POB to accept the original $67.5-million offer, but with 12 months tacked on for Copper Mill to find funding:
Plaintiffs falsely blame Defendants for the failed closing. They claim that Defendants obstructed fundraising, pursued a competing transaction, and induced Copper Mill into the venture while secretly intending to defeat the purchase. The written agreements and contemporaneous record do not support those allegations. …
The parties jointly pursued financing, and Defendants consented to Copper Mill’s exercise of the contractual extension option. Copper Mill never alleges that it could perform the purchase that it now seeks to revive, and it waited three and a half months after termination – and after proposing an entirely different transaction on entirely different terms – before bringing this suit.
In a separate, related suit in Suffolk Superior Court, Copper Mill is suing POB for damages for the alleged fraud and conspiracy it says POB engaged in after it realized the land was worth a lot more than the $67.5 million Copper Mill offered before the Boston Planning Department approved the project in August, 2025. POB has yet to answer that lawsuit, which alleges the same basic facts POB is contesting in the Land Court case.
In addition to asking Judge Sarah Turano-Flores to dismissing the Land Court suit, POB is also asking her to rescind the “lis pendens” order she granted Copper Mill, letting it attach a notice to the property’s Registry of Deeds records warning prospective buyers or investors that the parcels is currently involved in litigation.
Turano-Flores set a hearing at 2 p.m. on Nov. 16 to consider the POB motion.
