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The week in business

HOSPITALITY

Former YWCA to become boutique hotel with an innovative theme

Another boutique hotel is coming to the South End, this one with an unusual spin on the city’s history, from fine arts to disco. Mount Vernon Co. said it will open the Revolution Hotel later this year, turning the former YWCA at 40 Berkeley St. into a 164-room hotel that will “reflect Boston’s rich history of notable innovations, rebellious individuals, and revolutionary events.” The company will do it through an array of interior exhibits and art to be installed throughout the mid-rise building, which Mount Vernon bought for $17.2 million in 2014. Early images show rooms decorated with paintings by historic Boston artists, overlaid with the titles of songs by Boston music legends such as Aerosmith and Donna Summer. The hotel aims to attract younger travelers and creative types to the property, a former YWCA and then a hostel where many of the smaller rooms lacked private bathrooms. To help encourage such guests, the hotel will feature price points notably lower than at many other hotels in the core of the city, with rooms starting at about $150 a night. The developer also is redoing the building’s large courtyard — behind a brick wall on Berkeley Street — to house an indoor-outdoor restaurant. The basement will become a bar that doubles as co-working space during the day. — TIM LOGAN

LABOR

Sheet metal workers agree to contract, end 12-day strike

About 1,400 sheet metal workers went back to work last week after agreeing to a contract that put an end to their 12-day strike. Boston-based Sheet Metal Workers Local 17 members voted to ratify a new contract with the Sheet Metal Workers and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association at a union meeting on Aug. 12. Few details of the four-year pact were made available, but Local 17 said it included wage increases and “improved overtime provisions” and that the contractors had increased their offer after union workers went on strike Aug. 1. “This is a fair contract that will raise standards for our families, for our communities, and for our future,” said Local 17 business manager Bob Butler, in a statement. “We look forward to working productively with SMACNA moving forward to increase opportunities for our members and for SMACNA contractors.” The contractors’ association and the Building Trades Employers Association did not respond to messages seeking comment. The union had pushed for higher wages — and double pay for overtime after 10 hours on weekdays and eight on weekends — saying that its members had sacrificed to help keep subcontractors afloat during the slow years that followed the recession of a decade ago. — TIM LOGAN, ALLISON HAGAN

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ENERGY

Vineyard Wind electricity prices may be relatively low

The first major offshore wind farm to be built off New England’s coast has at least one big selling point, compared with the doomed Cape Wind project that preceded it: much cheaper electricity. The new project, known as Vineyard Wind, is slated to begin construction next year, some 15 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Vineyard Wind has generated less opposition than Cape Wind, which succumbed to years of litigation because of its proposed location in Nantucket Sound, as close as 6 miles to shore. Cape Wind’s high prices fueled some of the opposition, but that apparently won’t be a problem for Vineyard Wind. The state’s three investor-owned electric utilities recently disclosed that they will pay Vineyard Wind about $89 a megawatt hour, on average, over the course of a 20-year contract for the first phase of the project, scheduled to come online in 2021. A second phase would cost less, an average of $79 per megawatt hour. Those prices are roughly one-third the rate of what the Cape Wind project would have charged, and at least half the cost of more recent offshore wind contracts in the United States. They are also about one-fourth the rate charged by Deepwater Wind’s Block Island project, a much smaller installation with just five turbines. It’s the country’s first offshore wind farm. — JON CHESTO

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DEVELOPMENT

Plan for former Boston Flower Exchange wins key approval

A proposal for a massive office development in the South End cleared a key city hurdle Thursday. The Boston Planning & Development Agency board approved Exchange South End, a four-building, 1.6-million-square-foot complex on the site of the shuttered Boston Flower Exchange on Albany Street. Its developers hope the site will eventually house about 7,000 tech and life science jobs. Neighbor-hood advocates said they are concerned about traffic and transit access to the site, which is in a hard-to-reach part of the South End and nearly a mile from the closest MBTA station. But the builders, The Abbey Group, are continuing to talk with transportation officials about building a new ramp to the Southeast Expressway. It also has pledged to study improved bus access to the area. The company hopes to start construction on the first phase of the $1 billion project next spring. — TIM LOGAN

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HEALTH INSURANCE

Rates for the Health Connector to rise an average of 4.2 percent

Health insurance rates will rise an average of 4.2 percent next year for individuals and small businesses buying coverage in Massachusetts, state officials said Thursday. The price increase is relatively modest compared with the beginning of 2018, when rates climbed an average of 16.8 percent after the White House followed through on a threat to pull federal payments that subsidize insurance coverage. Insurers raised their rates higher than usual in 2018 to make up for the loss in federal payments. The 2019 rates, released by the state Division of Insurance, go into effect Jan. 1. They apply to one slice of the insurance market: 402,489 people who get coverage through small employers or buy coverage individually on the state’s insurance exchange, the Massachusetts Health Connector. Some people will see their premium costs go down, while others will see increases ranging from about 2 percent to 13 percent, depending on their plans. Massachusetts officials have set a statewide target for containing the growth in total health care spending at 3.1 percent a year.
— PRIYANKA DAYAL MCCLUSKEY

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DEVELOPMENT

Plan for the L Street Power Station scaled back

Amid concerns that their original plans to transform the L Street Power Station would overwhelm its South Boston neighborhood, developers hoping to transform the shuttered plant have come back with a new, slightly scaled-back version. Hilco Redevelopment Partners and Redgate Capital on Thursday filed new plans with state and city officials that would trim nearly 250 units of housing from their 15-acre proposal — giving it 1,344 apartments and condos — while adding office space, a second hotel, and more than 400 parking spaces, to 1,397 in all. They also now say the project will be built out over 12 to 15 years, to ease it more slowly into the surrounding area. It’s a response to loud opposition from some neighbors, and several South Boston elected officials, after the plans were initially filed last year. They support redevelopment of the massive power plant site, but said, among other things, that the proposal contained too much building and too little parking. — TIM LOGAN

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