Columbia Point (Boston) - Timeline

Timeline

(cf. Lawton, University of Massachusetts Boston, research materials)
1630 - Puritan settlers land on Columbia Point. The site is used as a calf pasture for the town of Dorchester until 1869.
1884 - The Sewage pumping station opens at the end of Mile Road.
1942 - Camp McKay, used to house Italian prisoners during World War II, is built on the north side of the peninsula.
1954 - Columbia Point housing project opens and the first tenants move in.
1965 - The Columbia Point Health Center, the first community health center in the country, opens.
1966 - Construction of the Bayside Mall begins.
1971 - Construction of University of Massachusetts Boston begins.
1974 - The Harbor Campus of the University of Massachusetts Boston, opens on Columbia Point.
1975 - Tenants at several public housing projects file suit against the Boston Housing Authority, complaining of sub-standard living conditions.
1978 - The Boston Redevelopment Authority receives a $10 million federal grant for improvements at the Columbia Point housing project.
1979 - The John F. Kennedy Library is formally dedicated.
1984 - The Boston Housing Authority’s receivership ends and Corcoran, Mullins, Jennison, a private development company, takes over the management of Columbia Point, initiating a major cleanup and intensive maintenance improvements.
1985 - The Massachusetts State Archives opens in November.
1986 - The construction of the new Harbor Point housing complex, a mixed-income community, on the site of the former Columbia Point housing projects, begins.
1998 - Harbor Point Apartments achieves a 99% occupancy rate and celebrates its tenth anniversary.
2008 - A proposal for the re-development of the Bayside Exposition Center site into a mixed residential and commercial property to be called "Bayside on the Point" was offered for public perusal.
2009 - The Bayside Exposition Center site is lost in a foreclosure and eventually sold to the University of Massachusetts Boston.
2010 - The University of Massachusetts Boston formally buys the Bayside Expo property for $18.7 million in February 2010