Bayside Expo Center the next Harvard Square? That’s what UMass wants

UMass wants its 19.94-acre Bayside Expo Center site in Dorchester’s Columbia Point to become the next Harvard Square, according to a new request for information from developers who would make it so.

The school would also settle for turning the site once expected to host a pro soccer stadium into the next Kenmore Square or New Balance’s Boston Landing in Brighton or whatever M.I.T. has planned for the Volpe transit center in Kendall Square.

Basically, whatever goes up at the site has to be, according to the school’s Building Authority, “a mixed-use destination where a diverse community lives, learns and thrives, integrated with and complementary to the UMass Boston campus that optimizes its value and creates an oceanfront Boston neighborhood with academic, research, retail, residential, dining, entertainment and cultural uses, serving as a new gateway to UMass Boston ...”

Any developer would also be expected to engage neighborhood entities such as the Geiger-Gibson Community Health Center, St. Christopher’s Church, and Boston College High School in planning for the site, per the Globe’s Danny McDonald.

This is the third grand plan for the Bayside Expo Center site in three years.

It was once expected to host the athletes village for the 2024 Summer Olympics, but Boston pulled its bid for the Games. And then plans for that soccer arena for the New England Revolution fell through at the start of 2017.

UMass wants responses from developers by Oct. 6. Stay tuned.

• What to do with the former Bayside Expo site? UMass wants ideas [Curbed Boston]
• Boston pro soccer stadium appears kaput in Dorchester [Curbed Boston]
• Five would-be Olympic changes we'll miss the most [Curbed Boston]
• Kenmore hotels would add 763 rooms to a changing area [Curbed Boston]
• Allston development would plant hundreds of apartments near Boston Landing [Curbed Boston]
• M.I.T.’s Volpe Center redevelopment likely to include Cambridge’s tallest building [Curbed Boston]