The Boston Globe - 05.19.2019

8
OCTOBER 5, 2019

BUSINESS

By Priyanka Dayal McCluskey

GLOBE STAFF

South Shore Health’s chief execu-

tive, Dr. Gene E. Green, is stepping

down after he was suspended and in-

vestigated by the health system’s

board.

Green was placed on leave in Au-

gust while the board reviewed “various

operational and administrative issues.”

South Shore officials have not specified

what led to Green’s suspension or his

departure.

In a statement Friday, the organiza-

tion said Green “has informed South

Shore Health that he will not be re-

turning to the organization.”

South Shore officials declined to an-

swer questions about Green’s conduct

and performance as CEO or to disclose

any findings of

the investigation

of him. A spokes-

woman said the

health system

would not com-

ment on “per-

sonnel matters.”

South Shore

Health, the par-

ent of the 393-

bed South Shore

Hospital in Wey-

mouth, an-

nounced Green’s

suspension on

Aug. 13. The company also suspended

Wayne Stockbridge, its chief adminis-

trative officer and chief human re-

sources officer. South Shore declined

to say Friday whether Stockbridge was

still working there.

The health system hired the Boston

law firm Choate, Hall & Stewart to

conduct a review. That investigation

involved allegations Green created a

hostile work environment, according

to one person familiar with the matter.

Green did not respond Friday to a re-

quest for comment from the Globe.

Rose DiPietro, who became interim

CEOwhenGreenwassuspended,will

continue in that role while South

Shore searches for a permanent leader.

Green became CEO in November

2015 after running Suburban Hospital

in Bethesda, Md., part of the Johns

Hopkins health system.

South Shore has long been affiliat-

ed with Brigham and Women’s Hospi-

tal, part of the Partners HealthCare

system. But South Shore officials have

been considering a change. This sum-

mer, Green revealed that he was nego-

tiating a merger with Wellforce, the

parent company of Tufts Medical Cen-

ter. Green had pushed for the Well-

force deal and was interested in be-

coming CEO of Wellforce, several peo-

ple familiar with the matter told the

Globe.

CEO of

S. Shore

Health

resigns

GLOBE STAFF/FILE

Dr. Green was

placed on leave.

Building a neighbor-
hood from scratch can
be tricky. You can’t
blame Allston resi-
dents for casting wary
eyes toward Harvard
as the university as-
sembled a vast expanse
of land — nearly 150
acres in all — near the Mass. Pike for fu-
ture development.
This could be the next big thing for
Boston, the city’s answer to Kendall
Square across the river. All eyes are on
Harvard now as it tries to unlock that
land’s potential by picking development
partners to build out the first 14 acres
of its “Enterprise Research Campus.”
Nine teams made the cut for Round
2 and submitted bids to Harvard in
time for this week’s deadline.
The finalists represent an all-star
cast, many with experience on big-tick-
et projects, which will come in handy,
given the task at hand. They are: New
England Development; Wexford Sci-
ence & Technology and Accordia Part-
ners; Bulfinch Cos. and Harrison Street;
DivcoWest; HYM Investment Group;
Lendlease Group; Carpenter & Co. and
Longfellow Real Estate Partners; Na-
tional Development and Alexandria
Real Estate Equities; and Tishman
Speyer with Bellco Capital.
Harvard already has the parameters
spelled out in its permit with the Bos-
ton Planning & Development Agency:
400,000 square feet of offices or labs,
250,000 square feet for a hotel and con-
ference space, and 250,000 square feet
for housing. The details, though, will
depend on who wins this contest.
We won’t know the answer to that
one until the end of the year. Now that
the bids are in, the university-owned
Harvard Allston Land Co. will weigh
the various teams’ expertise and, of
course, what they’re willing to pay for a
long-term ground lease.
Theuniversityisunderpressureto
turn these dusty lots into a walkable ur-
ban neighborhood, not a walled-off col-
lege campus. So Harvard asked devel-
opers to go beyond the typical factors to
offer plans that boost diversity, afford-
able housing, public art and open
space, and a startup culture.
To some extent, these factors reflect
concerns raised by Allston neighbors
during the permitting process last year.
They fretted about too much open as-
phalt for parking, for example, and too
little green space.
On this, everyone seems to agree:
Few want a Seaport-on-the-Charles to
take shape, an exclusive enclave of glass
boxes. When he ran Massport, Tom
Glynn tried to encourage diversity
among the port authority’s recent proj-
ects on the South Boston Waterfront,
most notably with the construction and
investment teams for the new Omni ho-
tel on Summer Street.
Now, as chief executive of the Har-
vard land company, Glynn is taking the
lessons from the Seaport and applying
them to Allston.
Glynn issued a statement on Friday
saying these guiding principles will en-
sure the 14-acre project off Western Av-
enue complements the research taking
place at the school and integrates into a
thriving nearby neighborhood in All-
ston. Glynn says Harvard officials are
pleased that many of the bids include
plans and concepts that address these
core principles.
These bids are just for 14 acres. But
the winner could get the inside track to
be part of a much grander vision. Har-
vard owns another 22 acres waiting to
be developed next door, not to mention
another 100 in the Beacon Park Yard ar-
ea southeast of Cambridge Street and
possible air rights over the Pike.
Accessing these areas will be tough-
er. Harvard needs to wait for the De-
partment of Transportation to straight-
en out this stretch of the turnpike, a
$1.2 billion endeavor that will take the
better part of a decade. Also key: the
long-awaited West Station, a commuter
rail project that Harvard has agreed to
help subsidize but needs the state to
build. Then there’s the question of
when the next economic downturn will
hit, and how that might affect progress.
For the right development team,
however, the opportunity to work with
Harvard and write the future of this
part of the city on a massive blank can-
vas of land will be worth the challenges.

Jon Chesto can be reached at
[email protected].

Bids are in

for project

in Allston

Jon Chesto

CHESTO MEANS BUSINESS

By Tim Logan

GLOBE STAFF

The first office tower to get built

above the Massachusetts Turnpike

in nearly 40 years could start work

early next year, with a tenant in

hand.

Online auto seller CarGurus, now

based in Cambridge, has an agree-

ment to lease a large portion of a

new office building at the corner of

Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston

Street, part of a Turnpike “air rights”

project that won city approvals earli-

er this year.

Two sources familiar with the

deal said fast-growing CarGurus has

a letter of intent to lease roughly

300,000 square feet in the 540,000-

square foot-building, though they

stressed that such a step is short of a

signed lease, and either party could

still walk away. Developer Samuels &

Associates plans to start work on the

two-building project in early 2020,

and leasing materials say it would

open in 2022.

Both CarGurus and Samuels de-

clined comment.

“We have no signed lease for that

space, and we never speculate on

tenants,” said a Samuels spokes-

woman.

Still, a deal would launch con-

struction on the sort of project that

has long eluded Boston developers.

Not since Copley Place opened in the

early 1980s has anyone successfully

built above the Pike — navigating

the economic and engineering chal-

lenges of constructing towers above

the busy eight-lane highway, Com-

muter Rail, and Amtrak lines —

though many have tried.

Samuels, a veteran Boston devel-

opment firm most recently known

for remaking Boylston Street in the

Fenway, won approval in August

from the Boston Planning & Devel-

opment Agency for a 20-story office

tower and 13-story hotel on what’s

known as “Parcel 12,” space above

the west side of Mass. Avenue, be-

tween Boylston and Newbury

streets.

With firm land on either side of

the highway, experts say Parcel 12

may be easier to build on than some

other air rights sites. Samuels plans

to put a two-story plaza above much

of the highway itself, with the tall

buildings pushed to either side of the

site on land. Still, the project will be

complicated. Numerous air rights

projects, most recently a condomini-

um tower nearby at the corner of

Boylston and Dalton streets, won

city approvals but stalled as their

cost and complexity mounted.

Samuels and engineers from the

Massachusetts Department of Trans-

portation have been working for

months on a construction plan that,

among other things, would aim to

minimize impact on traffic below.

They say they’re confident they can

pull off the project.

For CarGurus, the move would

signal a significant expansion, and a

higher-profile.

The company, which operates an

online auto sales marketplace, oper-

ates out of three buildings in Canal

Park and First Street in East Cam-

bridge, leasing just under 150,

square feet in all, according to regu-

latory filings. The new tower would

give it room to grow its employee

count — about 730 across five cities

in the US and Europe — and in-

crease its visibility in Boston – thou-

sands of drivers will pass under-

neath the building every day.

“That project will be like a new

gateway to Boston,” said Meg Main-

zer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay

Association. “It’s a great big bill-

board for the city, and for whatever

company goes in there.”

Tim Logan can be reached at

[email protected].

When it comes to

reading the econo-

my, there are two

camps these days:

those who see

growth stalling as

trade turmoil un-

nerves businesses

and consumers,

and those who see growth continu-

ing to chug along at a modest pace.

The latest jobs report, released

Friday, had something to buttress

each side’s point of view.

For optimists, the reaction was

“phew.” After a week of data signal-

ing weaker manufacturing and ser-

vices that stoked recession fears, the

Labor Department said employers

added 136,000 workers in Septem-

ber and the unemployment rate fell

to 3.5 percent, the lowest since Di-

ana Ross & the Supremes last had a

No. 1 hit (“Someday We’ll Be Togeth-

er,” December 1969, to be exact).

For pessimists: The payroll expan-

sion was the smallest since May, and

job creation has slowed to an average

of 161,000 a month this year com-

pared with 223,000 in 2018. Hourly

wage growth, at 2.9 percent over last

year, was more sluggish than in pre-

vious months.

“The employment report was

mixed,” Eric Rosengren, president of

the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston,

said Friday in an e-mail. It’s not clear

whether the muted job growth re-

flects increasing difficulty in finding

workers, “or a more general slowing

of the economy,” he wrote.

Call Rosengren a guarded opti-

mist. Risks to the economy are in-

creasing, he said in an interview on

Thursday, but not enough in his

mind to warrant the two quarter-

point interest rate cuts that the ma-

jority of his colleagues on the Federal

Reserve’s policy committee have ap-

proved since the end of July.

Rosengren and his counterpart at

the Kansas City Fed opposed both

those reductions, while the president

of the St. Louis Fed pushed for a half-

point cut in September.

“The data has come in weaker of

late,” Rosengren said in the inter-

view, pointing to twin reports this

week from the Institute for Supply

Management. The ISM’s manufac-

turing index declined in September

to its lowest level since the start of

the recovery in mid-2009, while its

services index posted its weakest

reading since August 2016.

That data, along with Friday’s job

report, reinforced investors’ expecta-

tions that the Fed will lower rates

again after its next meeting, on Oct.

29-30. The prospects of another cut

calmed stock investors after a couple

of bad days earlier in the week. The

Dow Jones industrial average rose

373 points, or 1.4 percent, to close at

26,574.

Rosengren declined to say how

he’ll vote at the upcoming meeting.

“My preference is to sit, watch, and

wait to see how the data come in,” he

said.

It’s important to keep in mind

that no one on the policy-making

Federal Open Market Committee ex-

pects a recession. Their median fore-

cast, last updated in September, be-

fore the latest data, is for the econo-

my to expand by 2.2 percent this year

and 2 percent in 2020.

“If we end the year at 2 percent I

would be happy,” Rosengren said.

The split between Rosengren and

most of his colleagues is over the se-

verity of the threats to the economy.

The biggest risk is the fallout from

the US tariff fight with China, which

has already hurt business investment

and manufacturing, and could spill

over to consumer spending, the en-

gine driving about 70 percent of eco-

nomic output.

Rosengren expects China — and

the Brexit mess — to work out in

ways that don’t significantly harm

the US economy.

“An important area I will be look-

ing at closely is whether the consum-

er continues to spend enough to off-

set the weakness generated by trade

and geopolitical concerns,” he said

Friday.

The Fed officials who back lower

rates are less sanguine, and want to

ease credit as insurance against wan-

ing growth. But Rosengren said that

kind of protection has its own costs.

Reducing interest rates, especially

with inflation below the Fed’s 2 per-

cent target, may encourage excessive

borrowing by companies and house-

holds, and inflate prices for assets

such as stocks and real estate.

“I’m more worried about financial

stability” than his colleagues, he

said.

It’s unusual for the Fed to pre-

emptively lower rates when the econ-

omy is growing. The central bank did

so in 1998, amid the Asia and Russia

debt crises, and in 1987, after the

October stock market crash. Both

events failed to inflict extensive dam-

age to the economy, and the Fed end-

ed up reversing the cuts.

Rosengren made clear he’ll sup-

port aggressive action if evidence of a

steeper slowdown emerges. Given

the risks that accompany too much

cheap money, “I want to know for

sure that it’s needed.”

He also dismissed concerns that

with rates already low, further cuts

won’t do much good in the face of a

recession. The central bank can drop

rates to zero, resume buying govern-

ment bonds to pump cash into the

economy, and make clear it will con-

tinue both steps as long as needed.

“That combination is really pow-

erful,’’ he said.

You can reach me at

[email protected] and

follow me on Twitter @GlobeNewsEd.

ELKUS MANFREDI

A rendering of what the planned project would look like from the Massachusetts Turnpike.

CarGurus may move to

planned Mass. Pike tower

Fed’s Rosengren remains a guarded optimist

Larry Edelman