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Boch family purchases naming rights to Citi Performing Arts Center

THEATER

Boch family purchases naming rights to Citi Performing Arts Center

Ernie Boch Jr. was a teenager when he attended his first rock concert at the Wang Theatre — known then as the Music Hall. It was the early 1970s, and Cat Stevens and America were a hot ticket. Also in the audience that night was a fresh-faced Josiah Spaulding Jr., who years later would run the Wang. Boch, as everyone knows, grew up to run his family’s auto empire. Decades later the two guitar-playing executives would meet and strike up a friendship — now a partnership — over their love of music. On Thursday, Spaulding revealed that the Boch family has purchased the naming rights to the Citi Performing Arts Center, which operates the Wang and Shubert theaters and where he serves as CEO. Starting Nov. 1, the historic venues on Tremont Street will be known as the Wang Theatre at the Boch Center and the Shubert Theatre at the Boch Center. By that, Boch, 58, means that the Wang and Shubert are not just venues for concerts and shows in the evening, but promote music education and the arts by day. That matters to Boch, who runs his family’s multibillion-dollar dealership business but is also a trained musician who started the charitable foundation Music Drives Us, which funds musical opportunities for the underserved. — SHIRLEY LEUNG

LABOR

Mass. unemployment rate lowest in 15 years

With the state’s economic engine firing on nearly all cylinders, the jobless rate fell last month to its lowest level in 15 years. Unemployment in Massachusetts eased to 3.9 percent in August from 4.1 percent the prior month, the state reported on Thursday. Employers added 5,900 jobs last month, primarily in leisure and hospitality, education, and health care. Since the start of the year, most industries have added workers or kept their payrolls stable. The last time the state’s jobless rate was that low was in August 2001, just before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and it dipped as low as 2.6 percent during the dot-com boom of 2000. Companies are holding on tightly to the workers they have, said Alan Clayton-Matthews, an economics professor at Northeastern University. The number of Massachusetts residents filing for unemployment assistance dropped to 24,000 in July, the lowest it had been since October 2000, he said. Employers have shifted strategies in how they hire, not just in the high-demand technology sector, but even for more entry level and middle-income jobs in finance and health care, recruiters said. They are more willing to bet on candidates who don’t have all of the skills they need and train them — a strategy unheard of just a few years ago, when workers were plentiful and companies could be picky. Some employers have increased salaries or are offering current employees thousands of dollars in bonuses for recruiting new hires. — DEIRDRE FERNANDES

SELF-DRIVING CARS

Boston to study use of autonomous vehicles

Boston’s streets will soon become a test track for self-driving cars, with officials announcing that they plan to launch a study of autonomous vehicles by the end of the year. Cue the bad Boston driver jokes. The city said Wednesday that it was chosen by the World Economic Forum for a program focused on the future of urban transportation. Details on how the yearlong initiative will work are slim, but city officials said a key part of the partnership will be working with the Switzerland-based organization to develop policy recommendations for the fast-emerging technology. The Boston Consulting Group will also participate. Boston’s experiment with autonomous vehicles is the latest sign that a technology that sounded like science fiction to many a few years ago is nearly ready for the world’s roadways. Cambridge-based developer nuTonomy is operating self-driving taxis in Singapore. In Pittsburgh, the ride-for-hire service Uber on Wednesday rolled out a fleet of autonomous Ford Fusions to begin ferrying passengers, with human drivers on board just in case. — ADAM VACCARO

DEVELOPMENT

South Weymouth site has first major commercial tenant

The company that now controls the former South Weymouth air base knew it needed to make a bold offer to win a marquee tenant, so it promised something unusual: The first major commercial tenant to sign on would get its property for free. That gamble is paying off, with hundreds of jobs now expected. LStar, the North Carolina-based firm in charge of redeveloping the sprawling property, has inked a deal that will bring Netherlands-based Prodrive Technologies to the site. The electronics manufacturer plans to build a 300,000-square-foot complex over the next two years, with as many as 300 people working there by 2020. Prodrive, known for its robotics expertise, is still growing its reputation in the United States: This will be its first major campus in this country. One big selling point — aside from the free land — is the ample room for expansion if the company wanted to purchase more land, which it has signaled it probably would do down the line. Prodrive executives said they hope to have as many as 500 people working there by 2025, depending on the success of its US business and the level of public subsidies the firm obtains from the state. — JON CHESTO

DEVELOPMENT

Boston building boom turning to condos

As Boston’s building boom rolls on, developers are building more of something they haven’t built much of yet: condos. Condominiums are the majority of the more than 4,000 housing units that developers have asked to be permitted by the city so far this year. That’s a big shift from the last few years, when three-quarters of the new housing that has surged into Boston has been rental apartments. It’s a sign, city officials and developers say, of a rental market that’s beginning to soften, coupled with growing demand for homeownership in the city. That’s spurring condo projects far from the glitzy towers that have gone up in the Back Bay and the Seaport. Developers have filed detailed plans for a 56-unit condo building in West Roxbury. Davis Cos. recently broke ground on an 89-unit condo building in Allston. And in South Boston, a blocklong complex known as Washington Village (left), with 408 condos and about 250 apartments, will be built near Andrew Square, having won approval last month from the Boston Redevelopment Authority. — TIM LOGAN

DEVELOPMENT

The sound of silence surrounds Volpe Center redevelopment

The race is on for one of the most prized development sites in Greater Boston, if not the country. You wouldn’t know it though. A slew of major builders have filed proposals to redevelop the Volpe Center in Cambridge and gain access to 14 acres of buildable land in the heart of Kendall Square, a rare chance to reshape a big chunk of one of the nation’s richest real estate markets. But the federal agency that will pick a winner for the site — likely by the end of the year — is conducting the contest under a near total “cone of silence,’’ sharing little about what they’d like to see at the Volpe or what developers are pitching there. And that’s frustrating many in Cambridge, where civic debate and in-depth analysis is practically a way of life. City staff and council members spent months last year trying to update zoning on the site — which today houses a ’60s-era concrete tower surrounded by acres of fenced-off grass and parking lots — to reflect what they’d want today. But they gave up amid a jumble of competing demands for affordable housing, open space, and other civic needs. They’re starting again, with the hope of finalizing plans next year after a developer is picked. But it’s tough to even start the conversation without a better sense of what the General Services Administration wants. — TIM LOGAN