CANDY

Necco Wafers get a reprieve

It looks like Necco Wafers will continue to roll off the assembly line — for now. Family-owned Spangler Candy Company of Ohio — which makes Dum Dums lollipops and the orange marshmallow Circus Peanuts — added Necco to its portfolio Wednesday with a winning bid of $18,830,000 during an auction for the Revere-based candy maker in US Bankruptcy Court in Boston. With a packed gallery looking on during the nearly four-hour-long court session, Spangler beat out offers from Round Hill Investments LLC and Boston-based liquidator Gordon Brothers to become the new owner of the New England Confectionery Co., which traces its roots to 1847. Bidding, with Chief US Bankruptcy Judge Melvin S. Hoffman presiding, had started at $15,250,000. The result means a reprieve for the country’s oldest continuously operating candy company best known for its chalky Necco Wafers sweets — at least through the fall. Operations will continue in its Revere headquarters, where Necco’s lease has been extended through November. — KATHELEEN CONTI

ENERGY

Two large wind farms approved off Martha’s Vineyard

Officials in Massachusetts and Rhode Island announced contracts Wednesday for two massive offshore wind farms off Martha’s Vineyard, a move that could usher in a significant expansion of the industry in the region. The Baker administration said Vineyard Wind, a joint venture of Connecticut-based utility Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, was selected to build a wind farm with as many as 100 turbines about 15 miles south of the Vineyard. And Rhode ­Island officials said they selected Providence-based Deepwater Wind to build a 400-megawatt wind farm northwest of the Vineyard Wind project. The decisions mark an abrupt turn in fortunes for the wind power industry, which has struggled to build any offshore project of size in the United States. The Cape Wind project in Massachusetts endured more than a decade of opposition before surrendering in late 2017; the first to come online in New England was the modest five-turbine wind farm project that Deepwater built near Block Island in 2016. Baker administration officials said the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project is the largest single procurement of offshore wind power of any state. Vineyard Wind has applied for state and federal permits, and expects to start construction next year, with the first turbines connecting to the grid as soon as 2021. Officials said it was too early to disclose its cost. The Deepwater project also needs to get approval from the federal government to proceed. — JON CHESTO

DAIRY

Garelick Farms plant in Lynn to close

Many Lynn residents have been left with a sour taste in their mouth after learning that the Garelick Farms manufacturing plant on the Lynnway will close this fall. Dean Foods, the parent company of Garelick Farms, blamed the closure on falling milk sales when making the announcement to employees on Tuesday. Garelick, a 90-year-old milk and dairy company, is the seventh largest employer in Lynn, and an estimated 300 workers are expected to lose their jobs. The Dallas-based company controls 58 brands of dairy, juice, and ice cream products across the country including Land O’Lakes, TruMoo, and Friendly’s ice cream products sold in retail stores. In March, Dean Foods began to notify distributors that it would be severing contracts at the end of May due to “a surplus of raw milk at a time when the public already is consuming less fluid milk.’’ The average American now drinks 18 gallons of milk a year, according to the US Department of Agriculture, down from a high of 30 gallons a year in the 1970s. Recently multiple dairies in upstate New York, Indiana, and Tennessee also announced that their contracts with Dean Foods were not renewed and plants would be closed. — JANELLE NANOS

RESEARCH

Six local medical researchers share in funding from Howard Hughes institute

Does Boston boast more brainiacs than anywhere else in the country? By one measure it does. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a nonprofit research organization, on Wednesday named 19 new medical investigators who will receive a total of $200 million to do whatever biomedical research they want. For the second time since 2013, roughly a third of the investigators were based in the Boston area, a greater concentration than any region in the country. The institute, which was started in 1953 by the business magnate, aviator, and maverick film tycoon whose name it bears, will provide each investigator with $8 million over seven years. The term can be renewed after a scientific review. Recipients were picked from 675 eligible applicants. The six local investigators include microbiologist Thomas Bernhardt and cell biologist Stephen Liberles, both of Harvard Medical School; neuroscientist Edward Boyden of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Dr. Benjamin Ebert, an oncologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; neuroscientist Beth Stevens of Boston Children’s Hospital; and Feng Zhang, a biochemist at MIT who helped pioneer the CRISPR gene editing technology. Their research interests range from how to combat antibiotic resistance (Bernhardt) to cancer-causing mutations in blood cells that also predispose people to heart disease (Ebert), according to the institute. — JONATHAN SALTZMAN

SHORT-TERM RENTALS

Boston City Council postpones vote on new rules

The Boston City Council will probably spend at least two more weeks hammering out new rules governing short-term rentals in Boston, according to the measure’s leading advocate on the council. Councilor Michelle Wu said late Tuesday that a vote on the plan ­— which would sharply rein in popular by-the-night rental of apartments and homes in the city — would not happen Wednesday, as originally planned. She and other advocates are hoping for a vote June 6. A hearing Monday highlighted sharp divisions on the 13-member council over the plan, which Walsh hopes will help dent Boston’s high cost of housing but which some on the council worry is too restrictive and will hurt middle-class residents who earn extra cash renting their homes by the night. Short-term rental hosts and industry giants such as Airbnb have been lobbying for looser rules, while a coalition of housing advocates, hotel industry groups, and downtown neighborhood associations have been pushing for tight regulations. — TIM LOGAN

DEVELOPMENT

Conversation Law Foundation wants state to take another look at Boston harbor zoning

An environmental group wants the state environmental secretary, Matt Beaton, to reconsider new zoning he recently approved for Boston’s downtown waterfront, raising the prospect of a lawsuit that could further delay long-planned towers along Boston Harbor. The nonprofit Conservation Law Foundation said Beaton’s decision to allow a 600-foot-tall tower on the site of the Boston Harbor Garage and a 305-foot-high tower on the site of Hook Lobster violates state law, and sets a bad precedent by trading public access to the waterfront without gaining much in return. Specifically, CLF said the plans don’t mandate enough open space and allow too much height so close to the water, while requiring just $14.4 million in community benefits — mostly in funding from the project’s developers to help renovate Central Wharf in front of the New England Aquarium. Requests to reconsider were also lodged by residents of the Harbor Towers and the InterContinental condominium developments, both of which are located in the area covered by the plan. Beaton has until June 12 to reconsider. The zoning plan, which covers 42 acres from Long Wharf to the Moakley Bridge, was negotiated over years of both public and private meetings held by the Menino and Walsh administrations with Harbor Garage developer Donald Chiofaro, the New England Aquarium, and an array of neighborhood groups. — TIM LOGAN