Business

An Atlantic article on cab-alternative Uber focuses on Washington, DC, but a lot of it sounds familiar:

Almost all the everyday complaints about cabs trace back to this regulatory cocktail. Drivers won’t take you to the outer reaches of your metropolitan area? The regulated fares won’t let them charge you more to recover the cost of dead-heading back without a return customer. Cabs are poorly maintained? Blame restricted competition, and the inability to charge for better quality. Cabbies drive like maniacs? With high fixed costs for cars and gas, and no way to increase their earnings except by finding another fare, is it any wonder that they try to get from place to place as fast as possible?

“Farmers To You” a partnership between Boston area families and Vermont farmers, is pleased to announce the addition of Newton Center to their serviced communities. The Newton Center Montessori School (on Crescent Ave off Center St.) is the local pick-up site on Wednesdays between 2:00 and 3:30.

A "CSA with choice", Farmers To You delivers the best of Vermont farms direct to Boston neighborhoods and strives to establish a regional food system. Already established in Cambridge, Beverly, Newburyport, Arlington, Lexington, Jamaica Plain and Somerville, the addition of Newton rounds out the weekly delivery.

Farmers To You inspiration grows out of a deep commitment:

• to provide access to highly nutritious and trustworthy food
• to rebuild a safe and sustainable local food system
• to support healthy families and healthy farms in our communities

Their skills in farming, distribution, business, and education combine to create a local food system that brings interested families and committed farmers and producers into a transformational partnership that is having a profound effect on the health of their families and communities.

Farmers To You provides:

• more choice than a CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture)
• more convenience than a farmers market

“Farmers To You” a partnership between Boston area families and Vermont farmers, is pleased to announce the addition of Newton Center to their serviced communities. The Newton Center Montessori School (on Crescent Ave off Center St.) is the local pick-up site on Wednesdays between 2:00 and 3:30.

A "CSA with choice", Farmers To You delivers the best of Vermont farms direct to Boston neighborhoods and strives to establish a regional food system. Already established in Cambridge, Beverly, Newburyport, Arlington, Lexington, Jamaica Plain and Somerville, the addition of Newton rounds out the weekly delivery.

Farmers To You inspiration grows out of a deep commitment:

• to provide access to highly nutritious and trustworthy food
• to rebuild a safe and sustainable local food system
• to support healthy families and healthy farms in our communities

Their skills in farming, distribution, business, and education combine to create a local food system that brings interested families and committed farmers and producers into a transformational partnership that is having a profound effect on the health of their families and communities.

Farmers To You provides:

• more choice than a CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture)
• more convenience than a farmers market

The Chelsea Record can't restrain its enthusiasm for the city's first Starbucks - finally, proof that Chelsea is no longer a gritty backwater where people have no appreciation for "a richer, sometimes exotically mixed cup of coffee" but instead a more refined community on the move:

A Starbucks in Chelsea is a good barometer of things that are happening here.

Better yet, it is a good barometer of things to come.

We welcome Starbucks.

What a wonderful addition to the mall.

The Boston Business Journal reports Harpoon Brewery is expanding its waterfront facilities, in part to make room for more visitors who want to see where the beer happens.

The FCC says Boston can reimpose Comcast price controls lifted in 2001 because RCN really isn't an alternative in most of the city.

The commission had lifted Boston's ability to dampen price increases on "basic service tier rates" in 2001 on the premise that RCN would eventually cover the entire city and provide effective competitive price controls.

The Boston Business Journal reports on the end of Darryl Settles' plans for a hotel.

Iseut lists the specific stores she'd love to see renting space in the new 'n' improved Dudley Square.

I have a dream. That dream is about a fair shake for everyone regardless of race, sexual preference, gender, ethnicity, or economic bracket but it also includes a quality restaurant open after 6 p.m. and on the weekends, a fish market where fresh fish outnumber fly swarms, and a clothing store where the owner greets me with something gentler than a snarl and a glare as I enter. My dream Dudley would include many of the below orgs/stores/businesses (in no particular order), and if not them, then independently owned galleries and shops with similar measures of creativity and decent customer service - things which are kinda rare in Dudley Square now.

Bain & Co. (different from Bain Capital) is suing a Colorado man it charges is using its name and mission statement to drum up business for his own consulting firm.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Bain alleges that when its lawyers asked Him Woods to knock it off, he responded by telling them they could "kiss my black ass" and that unless Bain backed off - or paid him $20,000 for the bainconsultinggroup.com domain name - he would unleash "a social media onslaught" against the Boston-based firm.

A guy who bought stock in A123 Systems sometime over the past year wants his money back, and then some.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Scott Heiss charges the Waltham-based company, which makes large lithium batteries for auto manufacturers, knew about problems at a Michigan manufacturing plant well before it went public with them and that mean he bought stock at artificially high prices - the price tumbled after the news came out.

Heiss is seeking to be made lead plaintiff in a class-action suit that seeks lots of money for the alleged damages to the portfolios of investors like him.

A Brookline software company run out of its founder's house yesterday sued the makers of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty for patent infringement. Worlds Inc. alleges the two games violates patents it's received between 2007 and last December for creating and controlling 3D avatars in online environments. It's seeking unspecified, but not doubt large, damages and lawyer's fees.

Its most recent patent, issued Dec. 20, claims the rights to:

NECCO has sued one of its distributors, charging the company stopped paying its bills and threatened to "flood the market" with cheap knock-offs of candy hearts and wafers.

In a suit filed yesterday in US District Court, the Revere-based candy maker says it wants the $378,532.44 it claims Allied International Co. owes it in unpaid invoices, plus lots of damages.

NECCO alleges that Allied stopped paying its invoices for deliveries to the Dollar General chain in October and that when NECCO asked for its money and threatened to start servicing Dollar General itself, Allied sent a message that wouldn't fit on a candy heart:

[An Allied official] threatened that, if NECCO exercised its right to withhold product and/or ship directly to Dollar General, Allied would seek to materially harm NECCO's business through, but not limited to, flooding the market with knock-off product that would compete directly with the NECCO brand. Allied made these extortionate threats in order to coerce NECCO to continue to deal through Allied.

YourArlington.com reports Cameras Inc., with outlets in Arlington and Davis Square, is shutting down.

The Globe reports (registration required).

From the cover of today's Building 19 circular. Maybe that explains why Martha Coakley (upper right) looks so annoyed.

The Globe and Phoenix report.

A Florida woman is suing Concord-based Vibram USA over its Vibram FiveFingers sneakers, claiming they not only fail to provide the health benefits the company claims, they can lead to injuries among people who fail to adjust their gait while using them.

In her suit, filed yesterday in US District Court in Boston, Valerie Bezdek does not specify how she became "damaged" while using the sneakers, but says she never would have bought a pair if she'd known the truth. She's asking to be named lead plaintiff in a class-action suit that seeks millions of dollars in damages and lawyer's fees.

The Boston Business Journal details the company's filing with the BRA for its $235-million project.

The Charles Street AME Church filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last night as a way to keep OneUnited Bank from holding a foreclosure auction on the church steps tomorrow.

In the filing, church pastor (and School Committee chairman) Gregory Groover accused the bank of aggressively going after the church - refusing to even talk to some benefactors who pledged to buy the loan in 2010 - because of its own financial problems. He recounted what happened after Steve Pagliuca and others made their offer:

The Bank reacted very unexpectedly. They did not even try to negotiate. Rather, within two hours of the end of the phone call, they sent me a one-page letter stating that they would not entertain any offers of less than full payment, and demanding that the Church immediately affirm that it would promptly pay the loan in full or else the Bank would immediately sue to collect. The Church did not have any such funds to pay the loan in full.

The city is moving ahead with it's plans to put a year-round, indoor, multiple independent vendor Public Market in Downtown Boston. Having lived in a city(Portland, ME) with a dedicated indoor market similar to the proposal for this one, I'll say, I can't be more excited to see this come to fruition.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-03-19/yourtown/31211513_1_operations-manager-market-site-year-round-market

I really hope that the managing company of this one doesn't fall prey to some of the same unfortunate snowballs that ours did - the high rents drove some founding vendors out, the rents made the produce/product prices go up to cover overhead, the rise in prices drove potential customers away.

*crossing my fingers and waiting for the next report*

Ed. note: Post updated to clarify that the ruling was only on the poles between 2005 and 2009.

The Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled today that Verizon does not owe Boston $5.3 million in back taxes on its poles and wires over a four-year period.

The court said 150 years of telephone-related legislation in Massachusetts has consistently excluded overhead wiring along public ways from the personal-property tax - even as legislators have let cities and towns tax wiring that snakes under public ways.

The question became moot for future years in 2010, when the law was changed, city officials say.

• Complete ruling, Verizon New England, Inc. vs. Board of Assessors of Boston and others
• Appellate Tax Board ruling overturned by the court

NStar has declared the Blackout of 2012 a "normal" event and won't pay anybody for their losses due to it, the Globe reports. "People normally have their own insurance," the company CEO said.

West Roxbury bankitis, in which the number of bank branches rises higher than the number of pizza places, is spreading. John Ford reports the building housing the Purple Shamrock near Faneuil Hall has been sold and that the new landlord's plans call for the bar to be replaced with a bank. And Ford says he's had enough and has just bought the domain name notanotherbank.com:

I'm mad. To give you another example: A large national bank wants to move into my neighborhood on Charles Street on Beacon Hill. As a result, a small food store business in operation for over 20 years may go out of business. I'm very connected to this neighborhood and I can tell you nobody wants this bank to occupy one of the best corners on Charles Street. But all indications are that this national bank has the political strength to make it happen, and so it more than likely will.

As stated – another large banks wants to take over The Purple Shamrock Pub, which is in one of Boston's best tourist locations. I say hell no.

The same day the state announced no change in our unemployment rate, the Venture Development Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston tweeted:

Dear Boston, you are creating way too many tech jobs. Please slow down while your universities catch up preparing workers. Thanks.

The "Dear tech workers, please go to California," was, of course, too long to fit.

High-tech marketer John Cass found the statement disconcerting:

Would zero jobs open mean everything is okay? I think that's rather an indication of the strength of the MA economy.

The center replied:

Mass last year created 3,550 new inno economy jobs. But are they filled? 3,772 tech jobs open according to Dice. 3,772 tech jobs open in Boston Metro Area, +10% over last year. Shocking failure to prepare workers for innovation economy jobs. Mismatch of jobs and qualifications undermines innovation economy.

Of course, where some people see an exciting way for Boston to cycle into the 21st century, lawyers see the potential for new business:

Boston's Hubway bike-share system will undoubtedly lead to an increase in the number of cyclists sharing the road with automobiles. Unfortunately, this increase in the volume of cyclists on the road will likely also lead to an increase of bicycle accidents in the City of Boston.

If you or a loved one has been injured in a bike accident, please contact the law firm of Altman & Altman, LLP to schedule a Free Initial Consultation with one of our skillful Greater Boston bike accident lawyers. Our phones are answered 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In addition to being available around the clock, all emails sent to the law firm of Altman & Altman receive an immediate response.

H/t Adam Castiglioni.