Business Monday — The Daily Boston Brief, September 14, 2026

Development

At least 16 Massachusetts communities have taken steps to limit data centers, through proposed or approved moratoriums or outright bans on large facilities, according to a count by Boston-based Hunneman. Since last week they also hold the first move: Gov. Maura Healey’s executive order, which she discussed at the State House on Sept. 8, requires a data center developer to get a benefits agreement approved by the host community before it pursues state approvals. Banker & Tradesman’s Steve Adams reports the order could end a potential construction boom before it starts. M. Matthew Madden Jr., a partner at Bowditch, reads it more narrowly: “It’s not saying data centers are not allowed here,” only that the communities, ratepayers and taxpayers who live there “will be on the front line of making these decisions.” The market was small to begin with. Massachusetts has 168 megawatts of existing data-center capacity across 58 facilities, per Baxtel Advisory, while Greater Atlanta had 2,882 megawatts under construction in the first half of 2026 alone, per CBRE, and CoStar’s Juan Arias says the state’s commercial electricity rates, third-highest in the country behind Hawaii and California, already discourage developers, and expects short-term demand for hyperscale data centers here to stay low. The administration had halted the data-center sales-and-use tax break in June. The local fights are specific: Plymouth’s Select Board has unanimously recommended a one-year moratorium to its Oct. 17 town meeting, Westfield passed one in July, and in Lowell a Middlesex Superior Court judge in August blocked installation of eight new 3,000-kilowatt generators at Markley Group’s 352,000-square-foot data center while a suit by ten residents is heard. “The key issue is: Will the towns let them build, and will they be able to underwrite it?” asks Hunneman’s Mark Fallon. Read more →

Labor

Nearly 2,000 registered and licensed practical nurses at Boston Medical Center’s main campus, together with about 70 nurses at the BMC-affiliated Brockton Behavioral Health Center, voted in person and online on Sept. 9 and 10, and nearly 90 percent of those voting authorized a three-day strike. They are represented by 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East and have been bargaining with BMC management for more than six months. An authorization is not a walkout: federal labor law requires ten days’ notice before any strike at a hospital, and no notice has been issued. The two sides next meet at the table on Friday, Sept. 25. Per WHDH 7News. Read more →

Restaurants

Demetri Tsolakis, 43, runs Xenia Greek Hospitality: Kaia in the South End, the Back Bay mezze and wine bar Krasi, Bar Vlaha in Brookline, the lounge Hecate and the fast-casual Greco, now at seven locations, with his 12th restaurant due later this year. For the better part of a decade before that he worked at Committee, the Seaport restaurant owned by George Aboujaoude, who hired him young. In March, Committee’s parent company, Pier 50, sued Tsolakis in Suffolk Superior Court, alleging that while working at Committee he misappropriated more than $1 million of its money on barstools, flatware, plates, floral arrangements and interior design, cleaning, printing and branding services for his own restaurants. Tsolakis denies all of it, and says he learned of the suit when a legal reporter called for comment. His lawyers have filed a third-party complaint seeking to shift responsibility for any financial mismanagement onto Committee’s outside bookkeeping firm; Pier 50’s attorney, David Rich, answers that the firm was retained to process payments as Tsolakis directed, not to audit the books. Aboujaoude says the decision to sue was made by Pier 50’s investors, not by him. Nothing has been proven: the case is in explorey, and Rich hopes for a trial in late 2027. Per Boston Magazine’s Wyndham Lewis, who interviewed both men. Read more →

Nikolas Bowie and Daphna Renan: Supremacy · Free · Tonight 7pm · Harvard Book Store

Two Harvard Law professors on their argument that the Supreme Court claimed, rather than inherited, its power to override Congress, with Dean Tomiko Brown-Nagin moderating.

Stephen Greenblatt: Dark Renaissance · Free with RSVP · Tuesday 6pm · Cambridge Public Library

Greenblatt on the paperback of his book about Shakespeare’s greatest rival, in conversation with the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Sebastian Smee. A signing follows.

Damien Jurado · Wednesday 8pm · The Sinclair, Harvard Square

The Seattle songwriter’s hushed, spare folk, with St. Yuma opening, in a room small enough to hear every word. All ages; doors at 7.

Art-Making After Dark at the ICA · Free · Thursday 6 to 8:30pm · ICA, Seaport

A free drop-in evening studio with the materials laid out and artists on hand to get you started, and the harbor-side galleries open alongside.

College sports

Boston College beat Rutgers 28-21 at Alumni Stadium on Friday night in the Red Bandanna Game, played on the 25th anniversary of Sept. 11 for the BC alumnus who saved as many as 18 people that day and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier in the week; his No. 19 was painted on the field at the 19-yard line. Linebacker Anthony Palano, a Washington State transfer, had nine tackles, a sack and two interceptions in the final ten minutes, and quarterback Mason McKenzie accounted for 346 of BC’s 402 yards, including a 78-yard fourth-quarter touchdown pass to Dawson Pough. The night turned somber late in the first half, when linebacker Bodie Kahoun was taken by ambulance to Brigham and Women’s Hospital with an apparent neck injury; the school said he had movement in all extremities. The Eagles are 1-1. Per The Boston Globe. Read more →

Patriots

The star receiver finally played his first game for New England in Wednesday’s 13-10 loss at Seattle and went down on the opening drive of the second half with a high ankle sprain. The Patriots placed him on injured reserve on Friday, so the 29-year-old misses at least the next four games, including Sunday’s home opener; NBC10 Boston reports he will return this season. In the meantime newcomer Romeo Doubs moves into the No. 1 receiver role. Patriots insider Phil Perry rated his own level of concern at 9 out of 10, asking whether the team will get “the A.J. Brown they thought they were getting for the rest of 2026.” Per NBC10 Boston. Read more →

Public safety

A woman called Sandwich police at about 9:30 p.m. Friday to report that a vehicle had driven through her bushes and into her parked car on Grand Oak Road in Forestdale. Responding officers identified the driver as off-duty Sandwich Officer Matthew Cotter, 44, who was unhurt; suspecting he was impaired, they called in State Police, who arrested him on OUI-related charges. He has been placed on paid administrative leave, the department says it is running its own internal investigation, and he is due to be arraigned in Barnstable District Court. Per WHDH 7News and NBC10 Boston. Read more →

Ohio-based KeyBank has hired Mark Williams, most recently chief growth officer at Lewiston, Maine’s Androscoggin Bank, to lead its business-banking sales teams across Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. In a Banker & Tradesman interview he describes New England as a stable, slower-growing market where much of the growth is “inorganic” and SBA lending does a lot of the work, and he argues that tariffs and inflation are landing hardest on the smallest companies: “Larger companies are absorbing it in their supply chain. You know what that means? That means small businesses are paying for it.” His pitch to them is liquidity, meaning faster receivables and slower payables. Per Banker & Tradesman. Read more →