HEALTH CARE

Beth Israel Deaconess, Lahey merger approved

Nearly two years after proposing the deal, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Lahey Health received final clearance to merge, striking a compromise with regulators who worried that the new health care giant would raise prices and impede access to care for low-income patients. In a settlement announced Thursday, Attorney General Maura Healey signed off on the merger while imposing constraints designed to prevent the combined hospital system from wielding too much power in the health care market. The new organization — to be called Beth Israel Lahey Health — will provide the biggest challenge yet to Partners HealthCare, the state’s dominant network of doctors and hospitals. Both systems will control similar shares of the market. The agreement with Healey’s office requires Beth Israel Lahey Health to cap price increases on medical services for seven years and comply with other requirements. These are the strictest limits ever placed on a hospital merger in the state, even though some critics said the terms would not stop the heath care market from evolving into an anticompetitive duopoly. The Federal Trade Commission, which also reviewed the merger, said Thursday that it will not challenge the deal — though commission officials said the decision was “a close call.’’ The settlement caps the growth in the hospital system’s prices at 3 percent a year, though that ceiling could potentially rise over time. Healey’s office said the price limits would prevent more than $1 billion in cost increases over seven years. (Massachusetts hospitals already are required to contain growth in overall spending to 3.1 percent annually.) The agreement also requires that Beth Israel Lahey officials make good-faith efforts to ensure that all of their doctors accept Medicaid, the insurance program for low-income residents. They also must produce advertising targeted at increasing the number of Medicaid patients they serve. — PRIYANKA DAYAL MCCLUSKEY

ACADEMIA

Former Massport CEO Glynn joins Harvard development efforts in Allston

So much for retirement. Two weeks after he stepped down as the Massachusetts Port Authority’s chief executive, Thomas Glynn is joining Harvard University to help the school with its efforts to build out the former Allston railyard properties, one of the last big blank slates for development in Boston. Glynn, 72, starts on Monday as chief executive of a new, unnamed development arm of Harvard that will oversee its Enterprise Research Campus in Allston. The Harvard Business School’s dean, Nitin Nohria, will chair the new subsidiary’s governing board, while Glynn will manage day-to-day operations and report to the board. Glynn will initially work out of an office on Harvard’s main campus in Cambridge but will eventually be based in Allston, along with a small staff. To start, Harvard envisions a 900,000-square-foot, multi-building complex on 14 acres the university owns along Western Avenue, near the business school and a new science and engineering school that’s set to open in 2020. The project would include office and lab space, residential units, and a hotel and conference center. The school still needs to decide whether it will hire one developer for the entire project, or divide up the work. Over the past two decades, Harvard has gained control of a massive swath of land in Allston previously used by the freight-train operator CSX, starting with a deal in 2000. The Enterprise Research Campus would occupy 36 acres of former CSX land north of Cambridge Street. Harvard still needs to craft a development plan for the roughly 100 acres between Cambridge Street and the back end of the Boston University campus, known as Allston Landing South. — JON CHESTO

ICONS

Citgo sign denied landmark status but protected for at least 30 years

It looks like the Citgo sign will brighten the night around Kenmore Square for decades to come. And it may even be a little higher in the sky. But it won’t be an official city landmark. Mayor Martin J. Walsh vetoed a plan to grant preservation protections to the illuminated advertisement Thursday, after Citgo and developer Related Beal reached an “agreement in principle’’ on a lease that will keep the half-century-old sign in place for another 30 years. The deal came together, after years of haggling, in a flurry of City Hall meetings this week between Walsh administration officials and executives of the Venezuelan-owned, Houston-based Citgo oil company and Related, a New York-based development giant that bought a block of Kenmore Square buildings, including the one that holds the sign, from Boston University for $144 million. Final terms still need to be approved, but people familiar with the deal say that Citgo would pay a higher rent than it long did to BU but that the sign could be elevated by as much as 30 feet as part of a redevelopment of the block that Related is planning, boosting its visibility on the city’s skyline. — TIM LOGAN

REAL ESTATE

Home prices show signs of leveling off

Greater Boston is still a tough — and expensive — place to buy a house, but the years of prices galloping relentlessly upward may be nearing an end. Data released Wednesday indicate that home prices in the region showed signs of leveling off in October, after a long run-up, with the volume of sales slowing even as the number of properties on the market increased. The figures help to reinforce a trend in the making for several months, amid rising interest rates and record-high asking prices throughout much of the region. While there’s no sign that prices will fall any time soon, the days of manic bidding wars and lightning-quick deals may be over, or nearly so. Figures from the trade group show the median sale price of a single-family home in Greater Boston in October climbed 7.1 percent from the same month last year, to $605,000. That was a record price for the month — which is typically the tail end of the home-buying season here — but was well below the pace of growth during the summer. — TIM LOGAN

BEER

Trillium restores pay to longtime workers after backlash

Facing intense backlash, Trillium Brewing Company announced Monday that it has restored the hourly wages of longtime employees whose pay had been cut. The move came about a week after complaints from current and former employees about the popular craft brewery’s labor practices came to light online. Trillium owners JC and Esther Tetreault posted a statement on the company’s website Monday evening. “We opened Fort Point just one month ago and, in that process, some of our tenured retail staff were given a lower rate than they had previously been making,’’ the statement read. “We have since met with those team members and reinstated their original rate.’’ One current and one former Trillium employee said the pay cuts had been from $8 an hour to $5 an hour, and coincided with the opening of the brewery’s new restaurant, bar, and retail shop in Fort Point. The pay cuts came as employees moved to the new facility, Trillium said, and brought longtime employees’ pay in line with workers hired more recently. But in an interview last week, JC Tetreault acknowledged that was a mistake. When the move was made public, first in online discussions at BeerAdvocate.com and then on social media, hundreds of customers posted scathing responses — some vowing never to return. — NESTOR RAMOS