Hello, Boston, and happy Friday! Have you seen our Instagram account yet? You don’t know what you’re missing. But first, check out the five things you need to know as you wrap up your busy workweek.
1. Clover closes
Clover Food Lab shut down its dozen locations this week after serving its plant-forward, fast-casual food to Bostonians for over 17 years. Isabel Hart has the details.
2. Future unclear for former UMass Lowell hotel, events center
A UMass Lowell–owned hotel and conference center that has been most recently used as a state emergency shelter is laying off employees and shutting down — with no new plan for the property is in sight. Maya Shavit has more here.
3. Food fight brewing?
In this week’s cover story, Grant Welker reports on a major new grocery chain taking on Trader Joe’s, Wegmans and other major grocers in Massachusetts. It’s called Sprouts, and its chief strategy officer is a native Bay Stater bringing the fresh-produce seller to his native state.
From our sponsor: 6 operational best practices: How your business can navigate a higher expense environment
4. Boston Legacy’s supplier delivery
Boston Legacy FC has faced all kinds of criticisms for its renovation (with the city of Boston) of White Stadium, including a lack of commitment to the community. Hannah Baratham-Green reports on how the Legacy has committed over 50% of its construction contracts to local and diverse businesses: $9.67 million to women-owned businesses and $14.23 million to minority-owned businesses.
5. Casket company to send ashes, DNA to space
If you read nothing else, check out Lucia Maffei’s story about Titan Casket, a local company that sells caskets online, and its latest marketing effort: sending your loved one’s ashes into space.
What else you need to know
By the numbers
- $25 million — donation to Brandeis University, its largest alumni gift in history, to help fund the creation of a new campus center
- 46 — acres of woodland camping and recreation in Kennebunkport, Maine, sold at auction, with a winning bidder to be approved by a bankruptcy judge
- $3.5 million — Mass. Life Sciences Center grant funding awarded for biomanufacturing initiatives statewide
- $1.4 million — grant awarded to Terrestrial, formerly known as Vaxess Technologies, the largest award from the MLSC’s biomanufacturing program
- $25 million — state investment to build out a quantum computing lab to be based at MIT, where quantum experts from across Massachusetts will be able to access to quantum hardware and specialized equipment.
In case you missed it
Boston Tech Week is pretty much in the rearview mirror. Check out all of our coverage and see what you may have missed.
What’s else is going on?
The Lawn on D is back this summer with a new look — it reopens on June 6 as The Grove at the Lawn on D, an “urban botanical oasis, complete with lush greenery, twinkle lights (and) cabanas.”
New England Business Report
Listen this Sunday to the New England Business Report, where I will be discussing the news of the week with Kim Carrigan and Joe Shortsleeve. Tune in at 8 a.m. on Sunday on WRKO-AM 680 or listen to the podcast here.
This week in history
On May 27, 1914, the Eastern States Agricultural and Industrial Exposition was incorporated. You might recognize it as the Big E.
And on May 29, 1885, Jan Matzeliger, an immigrant from Dutch Guiana, demonstrated his invention that could finish 75 shoes in a 10-hour day at a time when the most skilled craftsmen working by hand could turn out 50. (Read more at MassMoments.org)
Birds I’m seeing
Black-billed cuckoo at Mount Auburn Cemetery
What’s good on WERS-FM
Riptides, by Death Cab For Cutie
What I’m reading
No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era, by Jacqueline A. Jones
The chance to play at Fenway Park
Was there a more iconic time in Boston baseball history than 2004, when the Red Sox came back to beat the Yankees and went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals to win their first World Series in 86 years?
Tonight, former Red Sox pitchers Keith Foulke and Derek Lowe — two key members of that history-making, Curse of the Bambino–breaking band of idiots — will be back at Fenway Park as part of ABCD’s Field of Dreams.
ABCD’s president and CEO, Sharon Scott-Chandler, describes Field of Dreams as the place where everyday people get rare access to Fenway Park — and an unforgettable opportunity to come together for a powerful purpose.
By donating or forming a team, you get the chance to play on the iconic diamond. (And who knows, maybe you can hit better than this year’s Red Sox team.)
The sports benefit supports youth programs such as SummerWorks, ABCD’s summer youth-employment program, in partnership with the Boston Red Sox. Corporate and sponsored community teams include Cramer, TJX, Ropes & Gray, Boston MVPs, ABCD Youth and Beantown Softball.
If you’re not familiar with ABCD’s SummerWorks program, it runs from July 6 to Aug. 28, placing city youth in jobs working for nonprofit and mission-driven organizations, enabling them to work and serve in the communities in which they live, while earning a paycheck.
Those youth participants also engage in career development, job-readiness workshops and mentoring opportunities.
This afternoon’s event starts at 3:15 and the first game begins at 3:45 p.m. Lowe is scheduled to throw the first pitch for the first benefit game, while Foulke — who famously recorded the final out of that 2004 World Series — will throw out the first pitch for the second game.
“Every team that takes the field helps ABCD open doors for young people across Greater Boston,” she said.
To find out more — or for the chance to walk on that hallowed Kentucky bluegrass — learn more online.