Photo courtesy of the MCCA

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority has selected Colliers International to market and sell Back Bay’s Hynes Convention Center, a move the Baker administration hopes will generate millions to fund an expansion of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in the Seaport.

Gov. Charlie Baker in September proposed selling the Hynes to offset the estimated $500 million cost of a 500,000-square-foot BCEC expansion. The Back Bay facility reported $16.4 million in revenues and $17.3 million in expenses in fiscal 2018, and needs $200 million in repairs over the next decade, according to the MCCA. In addition, the MCCA says the venue significantly underperforms the BCEC thanks to its older design and lack of updates.

Colliers will be tasked with marketing the complex, 5.8-acre site, a portion of which sits on an air-rights deck over the Massachusetts Turnpike.

“We appreciated, and were impressed by, the talent and diversity of the team Colliers’ assembled for this project,” MCCA Executive Director David Gibbons said in a statement. “The MCCA was purposeful in its goal to be diverse and inclusive and Colliers proved their commitment to exceeding the high bar that was set.”

The project may be, as Colliers Managing Director of Investment Sales Frank Petz put it in a statment, “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create a new vision for this multi-dimensional asset,” but any potential project will need to deal with demands from neighboring restauranteurs and hoteliers who see meeting space in the Back Bay as essential to their businesses, as Banker & Tradesman reported earlier this month, with the local business association demanding 150,000 square feet of the stuff in any new project. Any private redevelopment proposal will have to go through the Boston Planning & Development Agency’s Article 80 process.