Boston 2024 panel touts plan for getting around Olympics on foot

Boston's hopes to land the Summer Olympics will hinge upon creating a "compact" games, where venues would be either within walking distance of each other or accessible by mass transit, the head of Boston 2024 said yesterday.

Many of the venues would belong to local universities — field hockey at Harvard Stadium, for example, Dan O'Connell said, and archery and fencing most likely at MIT — and some would be adapted or upgraded with the cooperation of the universities and the U.S. Olympic Committee, which is expected to decide as early as December which of four cities — Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Washington, D.C. — it will nominate to the International Olympic Committee to serve as the host city for the games.

Venues that are not within walking distance of each other would be in locations accessible by existing transportation routes, such as the Merrimac River in Lowell, where rowing matches would be held, he said, or areas where upgrades are planned under a 10-year capital program Gov. Deval Patrick proposed, a significant portion of which the Legislature authorized bond funding for, but which the next governor would have to approve.

O'Connell said the games — with an estimated cost of $4.5 billion — would be funded through broadcast revenues, 
$1.2 billion of which would go to the host city; international sponsorships; and ticket sales, for which there would likely be a lottery for local residents. The Secret Service would coordinate security, with all costs being reimbursed by the federal government, O'Connell said.

Equestrian matches would be held at Franklin Park, where White Stadium would be rebuilt and a new swimming pool would be installed, he said, while the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, which is scheduled to be expanded, would be the site of six venues and have events such as judo and table tennis.

South Station would need six to seven new train platforms to increase commuter rail capacity, O'Connell said, and new cars and signals on the Orange and Red lines would also increase capacity by 30 percent to 40 percent, without requiring additional tracks.

The Olympic Games would require 45,000 rooms at three- to five-star hotels within the Route 128 perimeter — rooms that already exist, O'Connell said, and 5,000 more rooms are permitted and scheduled for development before 2024.

In a statement yesterday, Mayor Martin J. Walsh said, it's "important to note that this is a very fluid process, and this is just the beginning of a long and robust public dialogue."

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Janet Yellen decries income inequality

Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen said yesterday that rising income inequality in the U.S. is at odds with American values.

"It is appropriate to ask whether this trend is compatible with values rooted in our nation's history, among them the high value Americans have traditionally placed on equality of opportunity," said Yellen, delivering the keynote at the Conference on Economic Opportunity and Inequality at the Boston Federal Reserve. "The past few decades of widening inequality can be summed up as significant income and wealth gains for those at the very top and stagnant living standards for the majority."

She said inequality has increased since the recession. According to Federal Reserve data, the wealthiest 5 percent held 
63 percent of the wealth in 2013, while the lower half of all households held only 1 percent.

Yellen's remarks on inequality were a departure from typical Fed chair topics, which usually cover monetary policy or unemployment.

She also cited higher education costs as an economic concern.

"Higher education has been and remains a potent source of economic opportunity in America, but I fear the large and growing burden of paying for it may make it harder for many young people to take advantage of the opportunity higher education offers," she said. "College costs have risen much faster than income ... and have become especially burdensome for households in the bottom half of the earnings distribution."

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Southie truck bypass goes out to bid

Massport has put out to bid a $22.5 million construction contract for the new Thomas J. Butler freight corridor that would take Conley Container Terminal truck traffic off of South Boston's residential East First Street.

The project, which has a total cost of $70 million including land acquisitions, will create a 3,100-foot bypass road for the 900 daily truck trips in and out of the waterfront cargo terminal.

"This is a longtime project that we've been working with the community on," said Sam Sleiman, Massport director of capital programs and environmental affairs. "This is for the bulk of the construction work."

Terminal-bound trucks now travel down Summer Street in South Boston and take a left onto East First Street. When the new road is completed, trucks will instead take a left directly off Summer Street — about 275 feet south of the Summer Street bridge near the Exelon power plant — onto a new 475-foot bridge over the Boston Harbor Reserved Channel.

The contract also will cover work on a new 4.4-acre public green space designed as a buffer between the terminal and East First Street. The park also will bear the name of Butler, the late former Massport director of government and community affairs and South Boston native.

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Apple juices up line of gadgets

Apple Inc. unveiled its latest gadget updates yesterday, rolling out new iPads with fingerprint recognition and a new version of its iMac desktop computer.

At its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., chief executive Tim Cook announced the iPad Air 2, a full-sized tablet that is a quarter-of-an-inch thick, and a new iPad Mini.

Last month, Apple introduced the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, as well as its first wearable gadget, the Apple Watch. Yesterday, Cook said all of the new products are designed to complement each other.

"They're designed to be incredible products individually, but they're also designed to work together seamlessly," he said.

Apple is hoping the updates will be a shot in the arm for its tablet industry, which has only grown 11 percent this year, far behind last year's 55 percent growth.

Roger Kay, a technology analyst with Endpoint Technologies, said the updates are not massive, but are still impressive.

"They're still the same products, they're just thinner, faster, brighter," he said. "It was a tour de force of technological prowess."

Among the announcements was an ultra-high resolution iMac, which sports a 5k resolution screen.

"If they're going to charge a premium price, they have to justify it," Kay said.

Apple also said yesterday that Apple Pay, its mobile wallet announced last month, will debut on Monday.

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Asian stocks sag as US growth jitters mount

TOKYO — Asian stock markets sank Thursday after a torrid session on Wall Street triggered by jitters the recovery in the world's No. 1 economy is weakening.

KEEPING SCORE: Tokyo's Nikkei 225 dived 2.2 percent to 14,736.90 as the dollar tumbled against the yen. South Korea's Kospi lost 0.6 percent to 1,915.13. Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.9 percent to 22,929.06 and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 shed 0.6 percent to 5,213.10. China's Shanghai Composite Index was little changed at 2,374.45.

ANALYST TAKE: "Traders might be counting on a rebound in the Dow tonight after five straight sessions of losses which has eroded nearly 1,000 points on the Dow," said Desmond Chua, analyst at CMC Markets in Hong Kong. "The greenback fell steeply against the majors following weak data which suggests the global slowdown is taking its toll on the largest economy in the world."

CURRENCIES: The dollar was trading at 106.10 yen, down from 107.03 yen late Wednesday. The euro rose to $1.2830 from $1.2655.

WALL STREET: U.S. retail sales contracted unexpectedly in September, suggesting demand in the world's biggest economy is losing strength. Still, share prices pared some of their earlier losses with the Dow Jones industrial average closing down 1 percent at 16,141.74. The Standard & Poor's 500 fell 0.8 percent to 1,862.49. The Nasdaq composite dropped 0.3 percent to 4,215.32. But fears about the future were rampant, prodding traders to move into less risky U.S. government bonds, gold and cash.

EUROPE SAGS: France's CAC 40 index sank 3.6 percent and Germany's DAX lost 2.9 percent. Britain's FTSE 100 fell 2.8 percent. Fears are growing about the region relapsing into a recession.

ENERGY SLUMP: The price of oil continued to fall to new lows. Benchmark U.S. crude was down 85 cents at $80.93 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell 6 cents to close at $81.78 on Wednesday.

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Fresh Ebola fears hit airline stocks

DALLAS — News that a nurse diagnosed with Ebola flew on a plane full of passengers raised fear among airline investors that the scare over the virus could cause travelers to avoid flying.

Shares of the biggest U.S. airlines tumbled between 5 and 8 percent before recovering in afternoon trading. The overall market slumped on concern about slowing global economic growth, but recouped some losses late in the day.

Health officials downplayed the possibility that any of the 132 passengers on Frontier Airlines Flight 1143 from Cleveland to Dallas-Fort Worth could have been infected, because the nurse showed no Ebola symptoms during the flight. Nonetheless, public health officials were notifying other passengers.

Hoping to minimize the impact of Ebola, the airline industry is banking on assurances from health experts that the virus is spread only through contact with the bodily fluids of someone already showing symptoms, and the presumption that someone that sick would not be physically able to travel.

Tony Tyler, CEO of the International Air Transport Association trade group, said Ebola was unlikely to reduce travel.

"You can't rule out that worry about this disease could cause a drop in traffic," he told reporters in San Diego. "My personal view is that is unlikely."

Robert Mann, an aviation consultant and former American Airlines executive, said the decision to notify other passengers on the flight was made out of extra caution, "but all that rational thought aside, it may cause some people to delay trips."

Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was extremely unlikely that passengers could have contracted the disease because the nurse, Amber Joy Vinson, was not vomiting or bleeding. But, he said, she should not have been on the flight because of the possibility that she had been exposed to Ebola and because she had a slightly elevated fever.

The CDC later confirmed that an official responsible for monitoring Vinson cleared her to fly. Frieden said that from now on, no one involved in caring for the original Ebola patient in Dallas would be allowed to travel except "in a controlled environment." CDC guidelines say that people possibly exposed to Ebola should avoid commercial flights for 21 days.

Frontier said Flight 1143 was that particular plane's last flight on Monday night, and it was cleaned overnight according to CDC standards before being used Tuesday. On Wednesday night, the plane was flown without passengers to Denver, where Frontier said it would be cleaned for a fourth time and seat covers and carpets around Vinson's seat would be removed.

Since the first case of Ebola was diagnosed in the U.S. last month, attention has focused mostly on travelers from West Africa, the center of the epidemic. The first victim was a Liberian man who flew into Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on a United Airlines flight from Washington's Dulles Airport. That case led U.S. officials to expand health screening of passengers from West Africa who arrive at five major airports.

The latest health worker flew on a domestic flight from an airport where there is no screening for fever.

Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport says it handles about 165,000 passengers per day or 60 million in a year. Airlines there operate both international and domestic flights.

Representatives of several U.S. airlines told The Associated Press that they have not received any new guidance from CDC on monitoring passengers and cleaning planes since the first U.S. Ebola case. They said that each night, crews cleanse planes and wipe down surfaces such as armrests and tray tables with strong disinfectants.

Ebola concerns and slower global economic growth have hurt airlines stocks in recent weeks, offsetting the benefit to airlines from falling fuel prices.

On Wednesday morning, airlines with the biggest international networks sold off the most before beginning to recover by early afternoon.

S&P Capital IQ analyst Jim Corridore blamed the morning sell-off mostly on the Ebola news; he called the fear overblown. Barclay's analyst David Fintzen similarly discounted the likelihood of a major U.S. outbreak that could cripple travel.

United and Delta each fell more than 7 percent before recovering. United Continental Holdings Inc. closed down 62 cents, or 1.4 percent, at $42.55; Delta Air Lines Inc. lost 41 cents, or 1.3 percent, to $32.38. American Airlines Group Inc. fell 6.4 percent at one point but closed up 18 cents at $31.69. Southwest Airlines Co. bounced back from 5.3 percent down to close up 2 cents at $30.02.

The broader Standard and Poor's 500 index closed down less than 1 percent.

___

AP Airlines Writer Scott Mayerowitz in San Diego contributed to this report.

Contact Koenig at http://www.twitter.com/airlinewriter

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Vent sensor co. now controls $2.2M

What do you do after designing missile, radar and submarine systems? Redesign heating and cooling vents, of course.

Ecovent, led by chief executive and former Lockheed Martin engineer Dipul Patel, has raised $2.2 million for its system of connected heating and cooling vent covers and sensors that Patel said addresses the long-standing challenge of controlling temperatures in individual rooms in a home.

Unlike lights, which are either on or off, temperature is at the mercy of many different factors, including the weather outside and airflow.

"Our system can understand what the sun position is, what the outdoor temperature is, what's going on in the house. The system adapts," he said.

With Ecovent, sensors in each room determine when to open or close vents to make each room the right temperature.

"We can make your home more comfortable," he said.

The company will use the money to continue development of Ecovent, with a target of shipping to consumers next August. Ecovent is taking preorders now.

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Asia stocks rise as oil slump promises benefits

Asian stock markets were mostly higher Wednesday as a slump in energy prices promised benefits for the region's major economies.

KEEPING SCORE: Japan's Nikkei 225 stock average was up 0.2 percent at 14,971.79 and Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.7 percent to 23,205.38. China's Shanghai Composite rose 0.4 percent to 2,369.76 and Seoul's Kospi was little changed at 1,928.08. Markets in Southeast Asia, Australia and New Zealand also were higher.

ENERGY SLUMP: The price of oil suffered its biggest drop in nearly two years after the International Energy Agency reduced its forecast for demand for this year and 2015. The benchmark U.S. crude futures contract fell $3.90 to close Tuesday at $81.84 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That was the biggest drop since November of 2012, and it's the lowest closing price since June of 2012. The contract was up 30 cents at $82.14 on Wednesday.

ASIA UPSIDE: Countries such as Japan, China, India, Indonesia and South Korea are major importers of oil and other fuels. They could benefit in multiple ways from a sustained drop in crude prices from improved trade balances to reduced subsidy bills. Lower overall energy prices could also flow through to higher disposable income for consumers.

THE QUOTE: "Lower energy prices are having a positive effect on the perception of improved real wages, i.e., inflation-adjusted wages, while many emerging markets are seeing increasing 'real' bond yields, which in turn could attract capital," said Chris Weston, chief market strategist at IG in Melbourne, Australia. "In the U.S., gasoline has fallen of late and should positively impact household wealth, which in turn should support future retail sales, promoting upside in GDP."

WALL STREET: Hit by a drop in energy stocks, the Dow lost 5.88 points, or 0.04 percent, to 16,315.19 on Tuesday. The S&P 500 index rose 2.96 points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,877.70. The Nasdaq gained 13.52 points, or 0.3 percent, to 4,227.17.

CURRENCIES: The euro rose to $1.2643 from $1.2638 late Tuesday. The dollar dropped to 107.22 yen from 107.30 yen.

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The Ticker

MIT celebrates ties to Nobel economics winner

The announcement that a French economist had won the Nobel Prize for economics set off celebrations yesterday across the Atlantic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he has strong ties.

Jean Tirole's research showing how regulators can manage markets dominated by a few powerful companies to keep them from blocking competition and overcharging customers is credited with helping drive the deregulation of industries in developed economies in the 1980s and '90s.

Tirole, 61, who works at the Toulouse School of Economics, earned his doctorate from MIT in 1981, was on the faculty from 1984 until 1991 and is still a visiting professor.

Cautious IPO for Fiat Chrysler shares

Investors cautiously greeted the Wall Street debut yesterday of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, a move that shifts the carmaker's center of gravity away from Italy and caps a decade of canny dealmaking and tough restructuring.

The shares opened at $9.00 in New York and rose as high as $9.55 before closing at $8.92, up 2.5 percent from a Friday close of $8.70 for the predecessor company Fiat SpA. Trading was muted, with about 5.8 million shares changing hands on the New York Stock Exchange.

Markets have another bad day

The stock market slumped , unable to shake off worries of a global economic slowdown and plunging oil prices. Airlines, energy and materials stocks were among the biggest decliners. Stocks are coming off their worst week in more than two years.

The downturn leaves the Standard & Poor's index 500 down 6.8 percent from its recent peak last month and up just 1.4 percent for the year.

All told, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 223.03, or 1.4 percent, to 16,321.07. The Standard & Poor's 500 index shed 31.39, or 1.7 percent, to 1,874.74. The Nasdaq slid 62.58 points, or 1.5 percent, to 4,213.66.

TOMORROW

• Labor Department releases the Producer Price Index for September.
• Commerce Department releases retail sales data for September.
• Commerce Department releases business inventories for August.
• Federal Reserve releases Beige Book.

Real estate firm JLL has hired Ryan Enright as an executive vice president, specializing in representing tenants, investors and owners in the leasing of office space throughout Greater Boston. Enright joins JLL from Equity Office Properties.

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Fuel meter co. to gas up with Kickstarter

A Somerville startup could be the next big innovation in the burgeoning smart-home industry as its fuel monitor hits Kickstarter next week.

Tank Utility, the brainchild of former EnerNOC mechanical engineer Nick Mashburn, is coming out of stealth mode with its app-enabled propane meter just in time for the season of home-heating headaches.

Tank Utility is a small, Wi-Fi-connected device that clips onto fuel tank gauges to collect and report usage data to homeowners via a mobile app. Based out of Greentown Labs, a clean energy business incubator in Somerville, Tank Utility aims to make sure homeowners always have a full tank, sending notifications when fuel levels are running low and projecting when a refill is needed. It's a potentially useful innovation for anyone who doesn't make it a habit of checking their fuel levels daily.

And it's a potential life-saver for owners of seasonal vacation homes, with frozen pipes and flooding posing big risks to that investment. New England is ground zero for that market. There are 94,000 vacation homes in Massachusetts, 101,000 in Maine and another 100,000 in Vermont and New Hampshire combined.

In fact, Mashburn got the idea for Tank Utility when he bought a vacation cabin in the White Mountains, his first experience with a fuel-heated home.

"I asked around about how people manage their tank levels and the answers were 'meh,' " he said. "Nobody's created anything like that."

So Mashburn built his own remote monitor, and that became the prototype for Tank Utility. He's also lucky enough to have a live-in mobile developer. His wife, Gwen Heimburg, has recently spent her weekends and nights designing and programming Tank Utility.

Mashburn has taken an interesting approach to bring the product to market. Rather than looking to the venture capital community, he's going crowdfunding first.

He believes the Kickstarter campaign, beginning Oct. 22, is the path toward raising enough capital for manufacturing. It's certainly going to be a good bellwether for consumer interest in this type of device.

The stats are on his side, with more than $11 billion in annual residential spending on fuel heat and lots of room for more efficiency in that space. More than 8 million homes nationwide use fuel.

It's easy to envision Tank Utility being of interest to Nest and other home automation players, because as they say in "Game of Thrones" and here in New England: Winter is coming.

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Local law firm serving craft beer industry

Local law firm Bowditch & Dewey is hopping on the explosive growth of craft breweries in Massachusetts and across the country with the creation of a specialty practice focusing on the beer industry niche.

"It's a thriving and growing industry," said Bob Young, an attorney in the firm's Framingham office and a co-chairman of the new group. "In a lot of ways, they're facing issues that are common to a lot of startup businesses. One of the key challenges ... for the brewers is how to convert their passion and their skill of making beer into a viable business."

Overall beer consumption is down somewhat, but craft beer sales have been growing by double digits. The market represented $14.3 billion of the total 
$100 billion beer market in 2013, up 20 percent from the prior year, according to the Brewers Association, a Boulder, Colo., trade group for craft brewers, which it defines as small, independent brewers.

"There are new breweries in planning or coming online at an astounding rate," Young said.

Bowditch & Dewey will tap 10 to 12 attorneys from offices in Framingham, Boston and Worcester to address corporate formation, real estate, environmental, employment, insurance and licensing issues in the heavily regulated industry.

"Employment issues come to the fore quite quickly as the business evolves from a couple of buddies in the basement to rented or even owned space with a 200-
barrel tank producing mass quantities of product," Young said.

Young and his firm already have represented craft brewers, including San Francisco's Anchor Brewing in a non-compete case brought against it and an employee this year by Boston's Harpoon Brewery. The parties resolved the case, and it has been dismissed.

The new practice also allows for a melding of personal and professional interests for Young, whose current fridge selection includes Morph IPA from Night Shift Brewing in Everett, some brews from Framingham's Jack's Abby Brewing and Allagash Saison from the Portland, Maine-based Allagash Brewing Co.

"I have long-considered myself an aficionado of craft beer," he said, "One of the great aspects of the craft beer movement, is it's really become more or less the equivalent of — at least in my mind — wine, where you have a glass with a meal, and the flavor of the beer can enhance the food."

Bowditch & Dewey's move is an interesting one, said Eric Hendler, who founded Jack's Abby in 2011 with his brothers. "Personally we haven't needed something like that as of yet, but … if an issue arose, it would be nice knowing that there was someone who had experience in particular to breweries," he said.

The small brewery — which expects to produce about 15,000 barrels this year and whose best-seller is an India-style pale lager called Hoponius Union — also is riding on craft beer's increasing popularity. "We've been fortunate that more and more consumers are giving beer a shot," Hendler said. "A lot of places that would not have considered us a year ago are now giving us a chance."

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Shift in kids' TV watching habits drives big changes to Discovery-Hasbro partnership

The seismic shifts in the way kids watch TV has led to major changes in the partnership between Discovery Communications and Hasbro in the Hub Network.

The kidvid channel that launched in October 2010 will be rebranded Discovery Family Channel as of Oct. 13. Hasbro's ownership stake in the channel will drop from 50 percent to 40 percent as the programming focus shifts to Hasbro-produced children's fare in the daytime hours and family-friendly fare in primetime.

Discovery group prexy Henry Schleiff will add oversight of the rebranded channel to his growing portfolio. Discovery exec Tom Cosgrove will serve as general manager of the Discovery Family.

The changes were sparked in part by the fact that the sides were coming up on the expiration of their original partnership agreement. With so much of kidvid viewing moving to VOD and SVOD platforms, the partners realized that a linear channel squarely devoted to kivid has limited growth potential. That reinforces how much the rise of on-demand options has changed the game for linear TV programmers in just the four years since the Hub was born.

At the same time, Discovery's research showed that the Hub attracts a healthy "co-viewing" audience of kids and adults watching together in primetime. With the brand overhaul, the plan is to program original series designed to appeal to multigenerational family auds in primetime. The partners see an opening for a channel that is consistently focused on drawing multigenerational viewers in primetime.

Hasbro, meanwhile, gains more flexibility to sell new and existing shows to digital outlets such as Netflix and Amazon. Kidvid is a huge component of overall viewing for the SVOD heavyweights, even though it doesn't get nearly as much attention in pop culture as original series aimed at adults.

Discovery bought out the additional 10 percent stake in the channel from Hasbro. That allows Discovery to consolidate the outlet's revenue and earnings with those of its 12 other majority-owned channels in the U.S.

Hub, which was a makeover of the former Discovery Kids channel, has been consistently overshadowed by its more established rivals, Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, but it is nonetheless a profitable venture for the partners, and those earnings will now flow directly to Discovery's bottom line as it will have majority control.

Discovery and Hasbro execs stressed that the decision to revise the terms of the partnership was done by mutual agreement in the best way to make the most of the asset. Hub Network has grown its subscriber base from 56 million cable homes in 2010 to about 70 million today. The channel makes most of its money on affiliate fees, so the hope is to grow the advertising side with broader-based programming in primetime.

"Hasbro is a world-class company with franchises and characters that appeal to kids and families around the world. They have been terrific partners over the past several years as we developed our kids television audience in the U.S., and we look forward to a continued strong collaboration as we evolve to the Discovery Family Channel together," said Discovery Communications' prexy-CEO David Zaslav.

The decision by Hub's founding president Margaret Loesch to step down by year's end also accelerated the makeover process. Discovery and Hasbro both recognized that they stood to benefit from modified terms.

"This was the result of conversations about the most important elements of our success and how to bring the strengths of each parent company to bear to move the channel forward," Brian Goldner, president-CEO of Hasbro, told Variety. "We saw the opportunity to build up the audience in the evenings and show advertisers that they have a great opportunity to reach adults and kids."

Hasbro-produced hits for the Hub include the toons "My Little Pony," "Littlest Pet Shop" and "Transformers Rescue Bots." Primetime programming will now be drawn in part from the Discovery vault of shows revolving around natural history, adventure and science themes.

For Rhode Island-based Hasbro, the Discovery channel is a the centerpiece of a content-focused strategy that involves feature films, such as the "Transformers" series with Paramount and the upcoming "Ouija" due out next month from Universal.

The toymaker is investing big in production through its Burbank-based Hasbro Studios arm. "We are continuing to develop partnerships with the big studios for some of our biggest brands," Goldner said. "And you'll see us developing movies with smaller budgets and strong filmmakers."

(c)2014 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

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