Having dinged the first go-around for having “too many flaws” that “undermined the integrity” of the process, the state inspector general said last week that the second attempt to find operators for highway service plazas is on a better footing, though he raised concerns that it is behind schedule.
Inspector General Jeffrey Shapiro wrote in a Sept. 22 report that the Department of Transportation has largely adopted the recommendations he made in February, after the first service plaza procurement process went off the rails. The MassDOT board awarded a contract to redevelop and run 18 service plazas to Irish retailer Applegreen in June 2025. The contract had a potential value of nearly $1 billion and was to last for 35 years. But Applegreen backed out of contract talks in September 2025 after rival bidder Global Partners waged media, legal and public relations offensives to block the MassDOT-Applegreen deal.
MassDOT started its do-over in March, this time with a revived Public Private Partnership Commission providing an additional layer of oversight. Shapiro said the report he released last week on the service plazas procurement and MassDOT’s draft lease was meant to satisfy his office’s mandate to call out any “material objections,” but also went beyond the draft to report on the full procurement process “[s]ince this project is of significant public interest.”
“Several recommendations have been incorporated into the RFP and P3 Commission process and will also apply to the next phase of the procurement. MassDOT should continue to focus on these recommendations and carry them through to the evaluation process, particularly in relation to conflicts of interest, evaluation committee interactions with proposers, and selection committee communication practices,” Shapiro wrote. “While it is encouraging to see that MassDOT has taken measurable steps to make its procurement procedures more transparent, competitive, and fair, the OIG advises the department to carry the improvements made during the RFP process through to the evaluation process.”
The one “material objection” Shapiro lodged was that he’d like to see MassDOT add a line to the draft lease explicitly giving his office the right to further audit and investigate the process.
The inspector general’s report also makes clear that he is unsure about MassDOT’s ability to have new service plaza operators in place by July 1, 2027 when the existing leases expire.
He said MassDOT’s original timeline for the procurement, which called for the P3 Commission to approve the request for proposals by Aug. 24 and MassDOT to issue the RFP by Sept. 3, “has been adjusted at the request of the P3 Commission.” Instead, according to Shapiro, the P3 Commission met for the first time on Aug. 24 and plans to meet again on Oct. 15. Shapiro’s report says the target dates for a P3 Commission vote on the RFP and MassDOT’s issuance are “TBD.”
“It is yet to be seen whether or how the changes will impact the goal of meeting the July 1, 2027, effective date for new leases,” Shapiro wrote. But he also said that his office “has been concerned with the timing in the process.”
“The OIG sent a letter to Interim Secretary [Phil] Eng on July 30, 2026, expressing these concerns,” Shapiro wrote. “In his response, the Interim Secretary affirmed MassDOT’s intent to make every effort to complete the next procurement and have a new operator in place by the time the current lease expires on June 30, 2027.”
Colin Young is the deputy editor for State House News Service and State Affairs Pro Massachusetts. Reach him at colin.young@statehousenews.com.
