The MassDOT board of directors has awarded a 35-year service plaza contract to an Ireland-based company over the hundreds of objections offered against the deal.

The board sat through more than an hour of complaints about the deal during their regular meeting on Wednesday, with dozens of speakers arriving in person to voice their displeasure and hundreds of opinions offered to them in writing, before overwhelmingly approving the contract selected by a committee formed for that purpose.

The deal in question will see major revitalization of the state’s highway service plazas over the next several years, with several of the rest stop facilities scheduled for outright demolition and reconstruction.

The bone of contention between the public and the board stems from the contract selection committee’s decision to go with Applegreen, a Dublin-based foreign convenience store retailer, over Bay State-based Global Partners.

Ahead of the vote, Global Partners Chief Operating Officer Mark Romaine told the board that the selection committee’s decisions and the board’s impending approval represented a terrible deal for Bay State taxpayers.

“Let me be very direct, the MassDOT committee’s recommendation is a failure of fiduciary responsibility,” he said.

Citing recent reporting (which itself cited his company’s figures), he said that “Global Partners offered a rent package that was over $500 million higher than the recommended bidder.”

Romaine stressed that it wasn’t a rounding error, simply “half a billion dollars” that could have been used for schools, roads, and bridges, but that instead “may never be seen.” His company, he said, was the highest bidder, and the “stronger, safer, proven operator.”

MassDOT’s Chief Development Officer Scott Bosworth told the board that the selection committee had a number of criteria to consider when making a decision, and that while rent income was a large part of it, that wasn’t the entire deal.

“We asked for the most advantageous financial package, I want to make sure that’s clear, because the capital expenditure was very important to us as we move forward,” Bosworth said.

Applegreen has agreed to invest $750 million into fixing the 18 service plazas they’ll be responsible for, he said. Nine of them will be reconstructed all together, Bosworth said, and all of them will be made better than they are now, according to the terms of the contract anyway.

The selected contract, Bosworth told the board, comes with both the capital improvements and could result in upwards of $994 million in revenue for MassDOT over its life.

However, to get there, “we need the best facilities we possibly can,” he said. The current operators — among them Global, McDonald’s and Gulf — are not maintaining the facilities to standards, according to Bosworth.

The board of directors, Bosworth warned, did not have a lot of time to dither on the matter. The new lease on the facilities is due to go live on January 1.

“We are desperately in need to keep these facilities open and operating seamlessly for our traveling public,” he said.

Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance Executive Director Paul Craney said that the whole process “smells” and he’s calling on lawmakers and the state’s oversight agencies to look into how the selection committee arrived at their decision.

“MassDOT just passed over a community-driven proposal backed by a Massachusetts employer with a strong track record in favor of an out-of-state operation with no local ties. This is the kind of backroom decision-making that erodes public trust,” Craney said.

A spokesperson for Applegreen told the Herald that they are “thrilled to have the opportunity to work with the Commonwealth and MassDOT to improve the travel experiences of drivers across Massachusetts for years to come.”