Thomas O’Connor has been telling Boston’s story for more than three decades. His 1976 book, Bibles, Brahmins, and Bosses, based on a series of lectures delivered at the Boston Public Library the year before, established the South Boston native as the dean of Boston historians, an informal title no one has challenged since. O’Connor began […]
Growth and Development
Posted inEconomy
Fairhaven loses both taxes and jobs to ATT
INTRO TEXT an at&t call center in Fairhaven will soon close its doors after a contentious nine-year relationship with the town, leaving many people feeling like they’ve been hung up on. Workers at the facility and municipal leaders have been crying foul over the company’s failure to live up to the job-creating promises of a […]
Posted inEconomy
The Garden of Peace is no walk in the park
Winter 2006 Dominic Chavez, The Boston Globe It’s unfortunate that the Garden of Peace, a little- known memorial to homicide victims, got its 15 minutes of fame for a nasty squabble between the families of those memorialized and administrators of Suffolk University. As The Boston Globe reported last fall, Suffolk plans to build a 31-floor […]
Posted inEconomy
Growth spurts
The 21st century has brought more choices to people looking for apartments and condos just outside Boston or spacious homes in the Berkshires, but the construction spurt hasn’t been so great in most of the bedroom communities near I-495. Overall, the number of permits for new homes in Massachusetts jumped by 25 percent between 2000 […]
Posted inEconomy
Power Failure
If sometime this winter you flip a light switch and nothing happens, think back to where you were on May 8, 2000—the day the electricity industry in Massachusetts started down a road that may now be leading toward rolling blackouts. The day started normally enough. Predawn temperatures hovered in the low 70s, warm but not […]
Posted inEconomy
Close quarters
Population density is a standard yardstick of development, but assessing it is trickier than it seems. According to the standard measure of density, communities in southeastern Massachusetts seem to have a lot of elbow room (see smaller map). For example, as of early 2000, fast-growing Plymouth was still more sparsely populated than the MetroWest suburb […]
Posted inEconomy
Falling fortunes
If the German company Adidas goes through with its buyout of Canton–based sneaker rival Reebok, the Bay State will be the home of just nine Fortune 500 companies, down from 17 in 1998. While Massachusetts remains a hub for nonprofit institutions, it is quickly becoming a minor player in the world of big business. The […]
Posted inEconomy
Lawrence CommunityWorks expands the definition of a CDC
On most evenings, the offices of Lawrence CommunityWorks bustle with activity. The sprawling former mill building that houses the nonprofit community development corporation is divided into many small spaces, which get steady use for meetings of all kinds. In one room, a group could be meeting to talk about a new zoning plan that is […]
Posted inEconomy
Telecom companies are wary as towns built their own wireless networks
PEPPERELL—This small, hilly town along the New Hampshire border is rural enough to boast that it doesn’t have a single traffic light (town officials don’t count the ones that constantly flash red), but this summer Pepperell quietly became the second municipality in the state to link all of its government buildings by means of a […]
Posted inEconomy
Corporate Citizens
There is no question that the announcement in January that Procter & Gamble, the Cincinnati–based consumer-products conglomerate, would acquire the Gillette Co., a Boston stalwart, struck a nerve. Partly, it was simply the shock. Unlike other recently sold companies, Gillette was not publicly in play. Indeed, having fought off P&G’s advances several years ago, Gillette’s […]