Business Monday — The Daily Boston Brief, August 24, 2026

Banking

Bank commercial real estate loan volume across the state rose 44 percent year over year in the first six months of 2026, on the Warren Group data behind Banker & Tradesman’s annual Fast 50 ranking of the fastest-growing lenders. Originations were up 46 percent on the same basis by the brokerage Newmark’s count, and its national head of commercial capital markets research, Joe Biasi, says regional banks did the largest share of it in the first two quarters — private lenders taking market share, he argues, is not the same thing as banks pulling back. The sharpest single climb on the list belongs to Reading Cooperative Bank, up 338.6 percent statewide, partly on ten loans worth $20.27 million for projects in Lawrence. Read more →

Development

Flatiron Energy’s Project Lite Brite — a 62,000-square-foot battery storage facility on a 2.8-acre site at 35 Electric Ave in Brighton — paused its Boston permitting in June 2025 after opposition from neighbors and elected officials. Boston’s new clean energy zoning, approved by the BPDA board this month and still awaiting final sign-off from the Zoning Commission, is written so that a project of that size can bypass local approvals; a BPDA spokesperson says its fate now sits with the state Energy Facilities Siting Board, which gets a maximum of 15 months to review. State Sen. William Brownsberger’s comment letter to the Planning Department raised fire risk from lithium-ion batteries next to a dense residential neighborhood; the company has said the site would help fill the gap left by the Mystic Generating Station’s 2024 closure. Read more →

Commercial property · Column

The Pioneer New England Legal Foundation said last week that over the past two years Boston agreed to lower assessments on more than 150 struggling office and commercial buildings, then raised them back to the previous year’s levels in retaliation against owners who had filed for abatements. The foundation, the legal arm of the Pioneer Institute, says the figure came out of explorey in the lawsuit it filed last year, and that it had previously identified only a few dozen affected buildings; it says owners learned of the change only when the bills arrived, with a cryptic “ATB dispute” notation on the property card. The Wu administration denies all wrongdoing, and the practice appears to have stopped. This is Scott Van Voorhis’s Commercial Interests column in Banker & Tradesman — the allegations are Pioneer’s, and they are untested in court. Read more →

Monday Night Jazz: Jerry Bergonzi Quartet + The Fringe · Tonight 8:30pm · Lilypad, Cambridge

Two long-running Boston jazz institutions on the same Monday bill in the small Inman Square room. The Fringe have been playing this town since the early 1970s.

Movie Night in the Park: Elio · Free · Tuesday 8pm · East Boston Memorial Park

The Pixar space one, on a screen in the park off Porter Street, free and outdoors. Tuesday is the sunny 80-degree day, which is the right forecast for sitting on the grass after dark.

Concerts in the Courtyard: Diego Herrera · Free · Wednesday 6pm · Boston Public Library, Copley

An hour in the Central Library’s Italianate courtyard, which is the quietest outdoor room in Back Bay and costs nothing to walk into.

Venture Café Thursday Gathering · Free · Thursday from 4:30pm · CIC, One Broadway, Cambridge

Kendall Square’s standing Thursday gathering, this week on how founders build something that holds. Free and open to anyone who registers, which is the unusual part.

Local

Faith Lutheran Church at 311 Broadway in Cambridge lost its 115-year-old building to a six-alarm fire on Easter Sunday 2023, a blaze the FBI and Cambridge Police believe was arson and which Rev. Robin Lutjohann says he has heard nothing about from investigators in two years. The congregation weighed merging, selling and moving, then voted to rebuild on the same lot: one level instead of three, more outdoor space, flexible seating that interfaith neighbors can use, drawn by the Cambridge firm SMMA. The first estimate ran to $9 million; the scaled-down version needs $4 to $6 million, and the campaign has raised $700,000 of an initial $1 million target from a congregation of about 100. Per Cambridge Day. Read more →

Politics

Massachusetts votes in its party primaries on Tuesday, Sept. 1. Separately, a ballot initiative would replace them with a “top two” or all-party primary, and the campaign against it is now under way: Jordan Berg Powers of Voter Rights MA told GBH’s All Things Considered that the state already lets unenrolled voters — the majority — pick whichever primary ballot they want, and that the change is backed by out-of-state money seeking a system that suits it. That is one side’s case, put by an opponent in an interview; GBH’s piece does not carry the proponents’ answer. Similar measures failed recently in Colorado and Arizona. Read more →

Public safety

A federal grand jury has indicted Jaden Zion Andre of Rockland on eight drug charges, one of which alleges that a substance he distributed caused the overdose death of a Las Vegas woman in April 2025. Prosecutors say he advertised synthetic opioids through a Telegram channel and a Proton Mail account, hid the drugs inside sealed bags of cheese balls, chips, popcorn and Pirate’s Booty, and mailed them from post offices across Massachusetts — and that packages tied to the same accounts have surfaced in overdose death investigations in Florida, Pennsylvania and Georgia. The allegations are the government’s and have not been tried. Per Boston.com. Read more →

Business

The Old Colony Avenue location of the three-shop upscale deli and specialty food group is no longer operating. Boston Restaurant Talk wrote it up on Wednesday, citing Caught in Southie and an Instagram post in which the business said it had made “the difficult decision to temporarily close the doors” after nearly four years, and that “the challenges of the last few years proved greater than we could overcome.” The other two locations are not mentioned as affected. Read more →