Facing backlash since her latest announcement that taxpayer costs had nearly tripled to $135 million for the White Stadium rehab project, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said she would have done it all over again had she known what the final costs would be.

When asked Tuesday whether she would have committed to the city’s public-private rehab of Franklin Park’s White Stadium with Boston Legacy FC had she known the city’s final cost for its half of the project would have been $135 million, rather than $50 million as initially estimated, Wu gave an emphatic, “Yes.”

“As the project evolved, we decided to do this right, and to go in on my belief that our Boston kids deserve nothing but the best,” Wu said on GBH’s Boston Public Radio. “This is a once-in-70-year investment. We have been trying to renovate White Stadium as a community for at least 40 years.”

Wu said “four or five” past stadium rehabilitation efforts under previous mayoral administrations “have been proposed and then fell apart because the financing was too hard to get done amidst a lot of competing needs.”

“We now have a partner in place with the Boston Legacy Football Club, the professional women’s soccer team, where we are paying 40% of the construction cost and they are delivering the largest community benefits package in the city’s history, of $252 million over 15 years of private money invested that our $135 million unlocks,” the mayor said.

Wu announced at a press conference last Friday that the city’s taxpayer-funded half of the White Stadium rebuild had grown to $135 million, nearly triple the cost since the project was announced two years ago.

The city had initially estimated its cost would be $50 million, and later revealed in late 2024 that taxpayer costs had ballooned to $91 million. Wu promised last week that the $135 million figure represented the project’s “final budget.”

Homeowners were hit this year with a 13% property tax increase, and the mayor’s office hasn’t responded to a Herald inquiry about how the latest cost hike would impact residential tax bills.

Boston Legacy FC is kicking in more than $190 million for its half of the project, bringing the total budget to more than $325 million. The shared cost had been estimated by the city at roughly $200 million in late 2024.

Wu on Tuesday described the city’s previous cost estimate for taxpayers as a “placeholder amount” in the capital budget.

“That first chunk is never intended to be fully representative of where the project will go,” Wu said. “Between that early placeholder, then an early estimate to now, yes, there have been lots of escalations in things that are outside of the city’s control, like steel prices going up 40% from when we started, or labor costs going up very significantly.

“A lot of things from federal policies and all of the chaos that’s been caused by this administration,” Wu said, referring, in part, to federal tariffs. “But that doesn’t explain all, or even most of the changes in the numbers.”

The mayor said the cost escalations for the project have been largely due to community feedback, with suggestions from the public baked into the project.

“We heard from over 100 public meetings and conversations, what people’s needs and dreams and hopes were, and we decided to expand the project, to do it right,” Wu said.

The public-private plan will see Boston Legacy FC share use of a rebuilt White Stadium with Boston Public Schools students, beginning next year. The new National Women’s Soccer League team is set to play its inaugural season this year at Gillette Stadium, due to construction delays.

Wu has championed the public-private deal as being crucial to delivering the financial investment needed to rebuild the 77-year-old stadium, but it’s been a source of contention since it was announced.

Critics have raised concerns over the ballooning price tag for taxpayers, along with transportation, parking and environmental challenges expected to be exacerbated by the project. They have described the plan as a “giveaway” to wealthy investors.

The project is the subject of a two-year-old community lawsuit that’s already gone to trial. A Suffolk Superior Court judge sided with the city last spring, finding that the rehab project would not illegally privatize public parkland in Franklin Park.

The case has been appealed, however, and is set to be heard by the state’s highest court — the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court — later this year, according to the Franklin Park Defenders, a community group that filed suit along with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy.

The Franklin Park Defenders pushed back last Friday at the city’s latest cost estimate that has climbed since it was first floated.

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“With these latest cost overruns, the taxpayer cost of turning White Stadium into a professional soccer complex has now more than quadrupled,” said Louis Elisa, a Dorchester resident, president of the Garrison-Trotter Neighborhood Association, and member of the Franklin Park Defenders. “This project is no longer anything close to the $30 million ‘renovation’ that was first proposed to Boston residents.

“And with four rounds of cost overruns before construction even begins, it’s only fair to expect that the ultimate cost to taxpayers will be even higher,” Elisa added.

Boston Legacy entered into a 10-year lease agreement with the city in December 2024.

Opponents of the public-private deal have pitched a high-school-only stadium alternative that they say can be built at a fraction of the cost to taxpayers, $64.6 million.