The week in business - The Boston Globe

INDUSTRY

GE delays opening of new building in Fort Point

General Electric Co. has pushed back the expected opening of its new building overlooking Fort Point Channel by two years after deciding to break the headquarters project into two phases. GE vice president Ann Klee said in a memo Tuesday to Boston employees that executives expect the 12-story building, dubbed South Point, to open in mid-2021, compared with an earlier goal of 2019. Two older brick buildings, together dubbed North Point, will be renovated first, with the aim of opening them in the first half of 2019. GE has already started work on the two old buildings, originally part of a Necco candy manufacturing complex. But construction on the new building was supposed to happen concurrently with much of the Necco renovations. Now, GE will finish the Necco buildings and move employees into them before starting construction of the new building. GE expects it will take 24 months to complete the new structure. The announcement comes less than two weeks after John Flannery’s promotion to the chief executive’s job at GE. He took over from Jeff Immelt, who will remain chairman until the end of the year. Flannery has said he is reviewing all of GE’s operations, which would include the headquarters project. The entire campus will be dubbed “Innovation Point” and consist of nearly 400,000 square feet of interior space spread among the three buildings. The futuristic 12-story building, designed by Gensler, will feature a giant solar sail and represent a striking departure from Fort Point’s old brick warehouses and the newer glass towers in the Seaport. — JON CHESTO

TRANSPORTATION

Proposal would use Logan parking revenue for maintenance of harbor tunnels

The House chairman of the Legislature’s transportation committee is looking to use a cut of Logan Airport parking revenue to help pay for upkeep of the Boston Harbor tunnels. Representative William Straus said he is talking with the Baker administration about diverting a portion of revenue that Massport receives from its Logan Airport parking into a new fund established for maintaining the Callahan, Sumner, and Ted Williams tunnels. “We’re always talking about how to take care of infrastructure,” Straus said. “I see it with the T every day. I don’t want to see these prized assets end up where we are with the T in terms of such a daunting backlog.” The impetus: the Massachusetts Port Authority is working with state regulators to obtain permits to add 5,000 parking spaces at the airport, spread among two garage projects. Straus said he would prefer that Massport agree to the tunnel charge as part of those discussions; he doesn’t think legislation is necessary. The Ted Williams Tunnel, in particular, has proven crucial to Logan’s rapid growth in new airlines during the past two decades. Straus estimates that roughly half of the traffic through the Williams is related to Logan. Straus said he’s flexible about how much would be charged, but suggested a dollar per car, to start. The charge would be taken out of Massport’s revenue, he said, and not treated as a surcharge on top of the cost that’s visible to customers. — JON CHESTO

REAL ESTATE

More affordable housing comes to affluent Boston neigborhoods

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Boston’s building boom is bringing more affordable housing to some of its most affluent neighborhoods. A city program requiring developers to include low-cost apartments in or near their buildings has created more than 400 units of affordable housing in the Seaport and in South Boston since 2000, according to new figures released by the city this week. Nearly 430 more have come in the South End and several neighborhoods in downtown Boston. That’s according to a report the city issued Monday on Boston’s Inclusionary Development Policy, which Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s administration is touting as a key tool in its bid to share the wealth of the city’s surging development. It found that, since 2000, private developers have built 1,737 apartments and condos citywide that were set at affordable prices. It’s a relatively small slice of the roughly 27,000 housing units Boston added between 2000 and 2015. — TIM LOGAN RETAIL Cambridge bans many pet shop sales In what may be the most sweeping such ban in the country, pet shops in Cambridge will soon be barred from selling most animals unless they come from an animal shelter or rescue organization. After a year of debate, the Cambridge City Council on Monday approved a ban on the retail sale of commercially bred dogs and cats, as well as birds, amphibians, reptiles, arachnids, and so-called pocket pets, such as ham sters and gerbils. The ordinance, which will go into effect after a year, takes aim at the commercial breeding of animals, a controversial industry plagued with allegations of inhumane practices. The ban would impact the city’s two pet shops, national retailers Petco and PetSmart. The Cambridge ordinance follows a similar onepassed in Boston last year banning the retail sale of commercially bred dogs, cats, and rabbits, and one recently approved in Stoneham that banned the sale of dogs and cats from so-called puppy and kitten mills. But Cambridge, which last year also banned the use of wild and exotic animals in traveling shows and circuses, went a step further than Boston, Stoneham, and hundreds of other US cities and towns with similar bans by including a wide variety of commercially-bred species. “It’s really a landmark ordinance,” said Laura Hagen, deputy director of advocacy for the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. “High-volume production is what’s driving the business model. . . . At our adoption centers we have seen a very large influx of these very small animals and birds.” Neither Petco or PetSmart sell dogs or cats nationally, instead encouraging customers to adopt. But the stores sell other, smaller live animals, many from out-of-state breeders. Both companies declined to comment. But in a letter to the Cambridge council prior to the vote, a Petco executive said the company sources all of its live birds, mammals, and reptiles from vendors who meet the industry’s care standards. — KATHELEEN CONTI

HOUSING

South Boston public housing complex to be renovated, add market-rate units

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The city’s oldest public housing development is slated to get a $1.6 billion renovation that will add several thousand units and place new residents paying market rates alongside low-income tenants. The 79-year-old Mary Ellen McCormack complex in South Boston (above) will become the second public housing project in the city to be converted to a modern, mixed-income community that may include retail offerings such as a supermarket or restaurants, the Boston Housing Authority said Thursday. The authority selected WinnCompanies, one of the nation’s largest housing companies, from a crowded field of developers angling for the rights to the 27-acre property, with its prime location just steps from two Red Line stops. Winn is proposing to replace the 1,016 subsidized apartments at the McCormack with 3,139 new units that will include middle-income and market-rate apartments and some condominiums. Plans also suggested adding outdoor community event space, small-business retail, a supermarket, and perhaps restaurants on Old Colony Avenue. The BHA is seeking to partner with private developers to update its aging complexes by allowing them to add market-rate units in exchange for building new housing for low-income tenants. It previously selected another Boston developer, Corcoran-Jennison Associates, to remake its sprawling complex in Charlestown. But the plan from Corcoran-Jennison to triple the size of the complex has drawn stiff neighborhood opposition. — KATHELEEN CONTI