Photo courtesy of the U.S. Department of Transportation

Massachusetts Institute of Technology completed its $750 million acquisition of one of the state’s most coveted development sites in recent decades, the Volpe Center property in Kendall Square.

The university was the high bidder in 2017 when the federal government made the 10-acre site at 55 Broadway available under a plan to maximize its value through a public-private partnership.

MIT closed on the transaction Jan. 26, according to data compiled by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.

Developers seeking to build on the site, located in MIT’s backyard and the increasingly valuable tech and life science cluster of East Cambridge, were required to build a replacement building for the existing U.S. Department of Transportation research center.

That project was completed last fall, when the transportation department occupied the 305,000-square-foot Volpe National Transportation Systems Center building on a 4-acre site. Researchers use the facility to study safety improvements for operation of commercial airliners, tractor-trailers and locomotives, including simulators located in a 26,000-square-foot lab section.

MIT received approval from Cambridge officials for eight buildings totaling over 3 million-square-foot of development on the remaining 10 acres, including offices, labs, housing and retail space.

Last summer, the university submitted designs for a 16-story office-lab building overlooking a new 1-acre park at the corner of Broadway and Third Street that is billed as the project’s signature public realm benefit.