DEVELOPMENT
Alexandria to sell Newton land where it had planned lab space
Alexandria Real Estate Equities is halting plans to convert a three-building office campus in Newton directly across from the Riverside MBTA Green Line station into a lab and instead intends to sell the property this year, the California-based life science development firm said in recent securities filings. Alexandria purchased the 509,702-square-foot Riverside Center office from an arm of Houston-based Hines in January 2020 for $235 million, with plans to pursue a lab conversion there once the office leases at the property expired. “Since our acquisition, the macroeconomic environment and demand for office space have deteriorated considerably,” Alexandria said in its recent quarterly earnings report. “We recognized a real estate impairment charge of approximately $139 million to reduce our investment in this campus to its current fair value less costs to sell from the book value of $259 million.” Companies often take on impairment charges if the value of an asset they own has dropped. Alexandria expects to sell Riverside Center in mid-2023. Also this month, Alexandria and National Development sold a 20 percent stake in 15 Necco St. in Boston to an unnamed investor. That 12-story building now under construction along the Fort Point Channel — a property that was once slated to be home to General Electric Co.’s headquarters — will be home to a genetic research center for pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co. Alexandria sold an 18 percent stake valued at $66.1 million, while National sold a 2 percent interest. — CATHERINE CARLOCK
DEVELOPMENT
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Fenway Corner project is revised
WS Development has made several changes to Fenway Corners, its large-scale mixed-use development on multiple land parcels surrounding Fenway Park. The changes include adding 50 housing units and boosting the project’s residential affordability levels to 20 percent, deferring 460,000 square feet of development, and restoring the historic city-owned “Duck House,” according to a recent filing to the Boston Planning and Development Agency. The project would transform several key parcels around Fenway Park and could eventually connect to Parcel 8, a future air rights site above the Massachusetts Turnpike. Fenway Sports Group has long held the state’s designation to develop Parcel 8. (John Henry, the principal owner of Fenway Sports Group, also owns The Boston Globe and the Boston Red Sox.) The future Lansdowne and Parcel 8 buildings would eventually be designed to be connected via a pedestrian path, linking Kenmore Square to Lansdowne Street. — CATHERINE CARLOCK
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CHARITY
Peter Lynch to auction a lunch with him to benefit Catholic schools
Warren Buffett is reportedly no longer auctioning off a lunch for charity, but you can still break bread with another legendary investor: Peter Lynch. The former portfolio manager and executive at Fidelity Investments is now offering lunch at his home for a winning bidder and seven friends to raise money for the Catholic Schools Foundation. Lynch is best known for the 13 years he spent running Fidelity’s Magellan Fund, eventually making it the largest stock fund in the world when he retired in 1990. The bidding for lunch with Lynch started at $25,000 on Tuesday and will continue through noon on Sunday. The money raised will go toward scholarships to Boston-area Catholic schools. Lynch has been a longtime supporter of the foundation, as well as a former board president and now president emeritus. This is the first time, though, that he has auctioned off a lunch for its benefit. It has not been announced yet whether the lunch will take place at Lynch’s Marblehead home, or his place in Boston. Mike Reardon, the foundation’s executive director, said the concept was inspired by Buffett’s lunch auctions, which repeatedly raised millions for the Glide Foundation, an antipoverty group in San Francisco. Buffett reportedly announced that his most recent lunch auction, held last June, would be his last. — JON CHESTO
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TECH
Want to make more than $100k? Become a tech intern
The highest-paying US internships are still in tech, despite the industry’s mass layoffs and shift to austerity in recent months. More than half of the 25 most richly rewarding internships are in the technology industry, according to Glassdoor, a website that compiles workers’ reviews of their employers. The ranking was based on salary reports from March 2022 to March 2023 by current and former US-based interns on the platform. Fintech firm Stripe Inc. and video game developer Roblox Corp. topped the list with an average salary of more than $9,000 a month for the temporary, entry-level gigs, which mostly go to college students and recent graduates. That would translate to a wage of about $56 an hour or an annual salary of about $108,000. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
MANUFACTURING
3M announces job cuts
3M plans to cut 6,000 jobs in the manufacturer’s latest move to adjust to slumping demand in several key markets. The reductions, part of a wider restructuring of the manufacturer, are expected to trim annual costs by as much as $900 million, 3M said in a statement reporting first-quarter earnings. The company has now announced 8,500 total job cuts this year, which would equate to about a 9 percent decline in its global workforce. — BLOOMBERG NEWS
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AUTOMOTIVE
Tesla cuts price of cheapest model below cost of average car
Tesla is now charging less for the cheapest version of the Model Y SUV than what the typical new vehicle sells for in the United States, a threshold Elon Musk crossed in blazing fashion. At $46,990, the base Model Y now costs $759 less than the average amount paid for a car or truck in the United States. No carmaker has made such a dramatic reduction to a high-volume vehicle in the modern age of the automobile. The Model Y was the best-selling EV in the US last year, and one of the top SUVs of any type. While Musk has denied that Tesla is starting a price war, his peers see it differently. Ford Motor Co. chief executive Jim Farley, whose Mustang Mach-ESUV lost considerable share to the Model Y last quarter — despite some discounting — said last week that price battles are “breaking out everywhere.” — BLOOMBERG NEWS
AIRLINES
ANA cancels cheap flights sold in error
ANA is canceling flight tickets that were sold at bargain-basement prices last week following a currency conversion error on its Vietnam website. Opportunists had jumped upon the mistake, snapping up tickets cheaply. Some spent just a few hundred dollars for business and first-class seats rather than the thousands they’d usually go for. — BLOOMBERG NEWS