Business Monday — The Daily Boston Brief, August 17, 2026

This week in Boston business: BostonYPA’s networking night for young entrepreneurs at the Aloft in the Seaport, Wednesday 6 to 8 · the Chief Product Officer Summit at the Westin Copley Place on Thursday · and the Greater Boston Chamber’s networking group, Thursday 8:30am.

Life sciences

That gap is the whole story of Boston’s lab market right now, and Steve Adams lays it out in Banker & Tradesman: local brokerages are tracking up to 16.6 million square feet of empty lab space across the region while CBRE counts just 2.45 million square feet of companies actually looking. Suburban lab rents are still asking north of $71 a foot against a 29 percent vacancy rate — a number that holds only until a landlord blinks, and some have. Alexandria, the largest lab landlord in the country, leased nearly 160,000 square feet in Andover to a semiconductor firm at a starting base rent of $17. Lenders have taken back BioMed Realty’s 321 Harrison Ave and 1000 Washington St in the South End, where a KKR and AllianceBernstein partnership assumed the $322.6 million mortgage in June. Three industry sources told the paper that Mass General Brigham has committed to a large block at 74M, the 465,000-square-foot Greystar tower in Assembly Square built for lab tenants who never came; Mass General Brigham did not comment. The construction pipeline is down to 2.1 million square feet, and the last lab built on spec without a tenant — Alexandria’s 421 Park in the Fenway — finished in June. Demand is rising for the first time since 2022, but JLL is tracking 49 companies looking and most of them want under 25,000 feet.

Labor

Harvard Academic Workers-UAW represents about 2,600 researchers, teachers and instructors across several Harvard schools. Of the 1,366 members who took part in the authorization vote, which ran from late March to July 25, almost 94 percent voted yes — well past the two thirds required. What Cambridge Day reported Friday is where that leaves things: no strike date has been set, members will pick a deadline in the coming weeks, and a bargaining-committee member said it would take real movement from the administration to avoid one. The large unit has held 44 bargaining sessions since September 2024 over protections for non-citizen workers, recourse on discrimination and harassment, job security, workload and pay; raises and cost-of-living adjustments have been frozen for the length of it. Harvard’s graduate student union ended a 40-day strike on June 1 without an agreement, which is the nearest precedent anyone has. The roughly 100 clinical instructors at the law school bargain separately and would not walk out.

Closings

Tiffani Faison is not renewing the lease on either room, Boston Restaurant Talk reported Friday off an interview she gave Boston.com. Sweet Cheeks Q at 1381 Boylston, the barbecue place she opened fifteen years ago, and Fool’s Errand next door at 1377, which shares its liquor license, will both serve their last night on November 24. Her account of why is unusually specific for a closing announcement: fuel surcharges on top of what she already pays, tariffs on anything imported, food costs up across the board, and a payroll she describes as a fair wage that is genuinely hard to carry. “A restaurant staying open for 15 years, full stop, is nearly impossible,” she told Boston.com. “It is cost-prohibitive to have restaurants now.” Whatever else it is, it is a data point about operating a mid-priced restaurant in this city, from someone who managed it for a decade and a half.

Mark Lamster: Welcome to Paradox City · Free · Tonight 7pm · Harvard Square

The architecture critic at Harvard Book Store, on a wet Monday when indoors is the correct answer. Red Line to Harvard, no ticket.

Fitness on the Greenway: strength and alignment · Free · Tuesday 5:30pm · Dewey Square

An hour on the lawn at Dewey Square, straight out of South Station, and the forecast for Tuesday has turned back to partly sunny and 79.

DCR Summer Nights with Eliza and the Vibes · Free · Wednesday 5:30pm · Carson Beach

A free set at the bath house on the water in South Boston, on what the forecast currently calls the sunniest evening of the week.

$5 Third Thursdays at the MFA · Thursday 5 to 10pm · Fenway

Five hours of the Museum of Fine Arts in the evening, once a month, at the price the name promises. Worth planning an actual evening around.

Baseball

Nobody had ever done it. Joshua Baez, born in Boston in 2003 and a 2021 graduate of Dexter Southfield in Brookline, debuted for the Cardinals at Wrigley on Saturday and homered in each of his first three at-bats — 449 feet to center, 382 to left, 368 to right. His fourth trip up produced a lineout, which is the only ordinary thing that happened to him all afternoon. Boston.com notes that 23,752 people have played in the majors, per Baseball Reference, and none of them had managed three in a debut. He leads all of Triple-A with 34 home runs.

The T

The settlement, released Friday, pays chief communications officer Gabrielle Mondestin $495,000 in supplemental wages, damages and legal fees over an incident at the end of a 2024 team dinner in which general manager Phil Eng pulled her hair. WBUR reports Mondestin will resign on Sept 18 after the T asked her to stay to hand over her duties. Eng, who is also serving as the state’s interim transportation secretary, said in the joint release that he regrets his actions; he had earlier called them insensitive to the Globe. The authority thanked Mondestin for coming forward.

Public safety

Preliminary figures from the Major Cities Chiefs Association, reported by NBC10 Boston, put Boston at 10 homicides in the first half of this year against 21 at the same point last year. Reported rapes and robberies are down as well. Aggravated assaults are up. The gap between that and how the summer has felt — two stabbings near North Station and South Station a day apart last week, one fatal — is the actual story, and City Councilor Ed Flynn is using it to press again on staffing, arguing officers working 16-hour shifts is the problem worth arguing about.

Business

The Massachusetts Clean Energy Center confirmed the layoffs to CommonWealth Beacon on Friday, citing a funding landscape disrupted by federal policy. The budget line tells the story faster: $8 million for MassCEC in the fiscal 2027 budget Gov. Healey signed last month, down from $10 million last year and $30 million in fiscal 2024. New chief executive Ben Downing inherits a smaller staff and a mandate to pivot away from offshore wind supply chains. The agency still has three federal awards and a small charge on utility bills worth about $20 million a year.