Hot Property: Take a swing at Big Papi’s condo

"Big Papi" wants to sell you his penthouse complete with his own furnishings.

Red Sox legend David Ortiz is selling his three-­bedroom condo atop a six-story midrise called the Water­mark. Built in 2007, the 81-unit building is part of the Waterworks at Chestnut Hill complex on the Brighton-Newton line that also includes three historic municipal water buildings converted into high-end condos on an 8.8-acre site.

The Watermark Penthouse 606 has almost 3,100 square feet of living space on one level and comes with two deeded garage spaces.

And while it is within the city borders, its sweeping views of the Chestnut Hill Reservoir across the street make Big Papi's place feel far way from congested Brighton, although it's only a quarter mile from Cleveland Circle.

But this penthouse retreat has a big signing price — $3.2 million.

Keep in mind the asking price includes the Ortiz family's living, dining, kitchen­ and bedroom furniture as well as its outdoor patio furniture. Big Papi is also throwing in five flatscreen TVs as well as central surround-sound system with high-end Bowers & Wilkins living-room speakers.

"All a new owner has to do is turn the key," said listing broker Paul Colleary of Braintree's Dream Realty, who has worked with Ortiz since 2004, taking him to see over 100 properties and helping him buy four places.

"David is a great guy to work with, very easygoing," said Colleary. "Whenever he signs a new contract, he starts looking around for a new place."

It's not that Ortiz is selling off all his belongings. The slugger's primary Bay State home is a secluded single-family in Weston. He bought the Watermark penthouse a few years ago as a quiet and convenient place for him and his family to stay during the long Red Sox season. Fenway Park is only three miles away.

The penthouse has star quality, most notably with its two large terraces with sweeping views, ideal for outdoor entertaining. Colleary said the view of the daily sunsets over the reservoir from the living-room deck are spectacular. But Ortiz found the larger of the two spaces, a 330-square foot deck off the kitchen, inviting for other reasons.

"It overlooks three community baseball diamonds at Cassidy Park, and Big Papi loved to sit out there and watch the kids play ball, including his son," said Colleary. "He also entertained out there a lot."

The interior of the penthouse is anything but average. There's floor-to-ceiling windows in the large living/dining area that has tray ceilings, a gas fireplace and an elaborate wood chandelier. And glass doors lead out to a 120-square-foot balcony with sweeping views.

The spacious kitchen has a large array of custom cherry­wood cabinets, granite counters and a cabinet-encased Sub-Zero refrigerator and a Wolfe gas oven and cooktop with an enormous wooden hood. There's an eat-in breakfast nook or else dine outdoors on the terrace.

The master bedroom suite is worthy of a star with floor-to-ceiling bedroom windows with automated shades and a king-size walk-in closet with cherrywood built-ins that held Big Papi's extensive wardrobe. There's the marble bathroom, with a supersized soaking tub, and there's even an attached home office with a separate entrance where Ortiz tended­ to business.

The other two bedrooms also each have en suite marble bathrooms.

There's some superstar expenses too. The yearly taxes are $28,047 and the condo fee is a steep $2,875 per month, but that does include heat, hot water and gas and a 24/7 concierge. And the Waterworks complex has a fitness facility, function room and even a Waterworks Museum on site.

Colleary said Ortiz's owner­ship has drawn some well-heeled sports fans to look at the property and that the penthouse could work well for another professional athlete, particularly someone just traded into Boston.

"We'll see what happens at Red Sox spring training," Colleary said. "If I haven't sold the property by then, there's some good prospects down there."

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Charlie Baker: Medicaid costs soaring

Gov. Charlie Baker sounded the alarm to business leaders over the soaring cost of the state's Medicaid program — plagued by "double-covered" patients and still hobbling from the disastrous rollout of Obamacare in 2013 — in his first address to the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

"It's critical not just for the MassHealth program, but for the rest of Health and Human Services and state government — and local government by the way," Baker said yesterday of reforming Medicaid. "If we don't solve that problem, we're going to create all kinds of issues for ourselves everywhere else in the state budget."

Baker blamed the spike on both the cost to cover patients after the state's Obamacare website failed, and sheer waste, such as some Bay Staters simultaneously enrolled in both MassHealth and private plans.

"Since no one on the MassHealth side has ever asked them if they have other coverage, they continue to be covered on the MassHealth program, so they're double-covered," said Baker. "There are a whole series of issues with this program we're going to have to dig deep into."

He added that the cost of MassHealth is slated to rise 13 percent and it makes up $13.5 billion of the entire $19 billion budget for Health and Human Services. Everything else in the HHS budget is up just 2 percent, he said.

He also vowed to develop regional plans for economic development, to create more transparency around health care costs, and meet with leaders in other New England states to discuss ways to lower energy prices, which he said are higher here than elsewhere because of ineffective infrastructure.

"We'd love your help on energy initiatives," said Baker. "We'd love your help on health care. We'd love your help on education."

Baker hung around long after his speech to meet and greet business leaders.

Asked how he plans to maintain bipartisan harmony with Democratic Speaker of the House Robert A. DeLeo and Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, Baker said: "You have far more opportunity to be successful in discussing policy and programming with the Legislature if you don't surprise them."

That's a lesson Baker said he learned while working in the Weld and Cellucci administrations.

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Brian Williams and the lost art of the public apology

Brian Williams is sorry. The NBC anchor said so on his nightly newscast, on Facebook and in the pages of Stars and Stripes, the magazine that first unearthed his repeated lies about flying in a helicopter struck by an RPG over a decade ago in Iraq.

And yet it's not enough.

It's not that being apologetic isn't adequate repentance for Williams' sin. What isn't enough is the nature of the apology he is offering. Like so many wayward public figures who aren't getting the right damage-control advice, Williams seems to believe apologizing early and often will take care of the problem without giving sufficient attention to how they say they are sorry.

Williams and NBC Universal - which may be sweating even more than the anchor is about his future as the face of its news division-probably think they did their best just by addressing the situation head-on in multiple outlets. To make such an apology from the very anchor desk where so many Americans trust him to be unfailingly honest was intended to acknowledge the gravity of his fabrication.

But the substance of what Williams said, and the absence of even feigned contrition in his delivery, only made his predicament worse.

Let's start with the wording of his statement. First, the utterance "I made a mistake" should be retired by all crisis-PR experts for the rest of eternity. It is a sentence intended to sound forthright and remorseful in all its unambiguous pithiness. But overuse over the years has turned "I made a mistake" into the opposite of what it should be; it's such a stock phrase, it basically signifies nothing beyond doing what shamed public figures feel they have to do.

In situations where household names like Williams shock us with their misdeeds, people are more interested in hearing some sense of why the sinner in question did what they did than just blurting out "I'm sorry." Williams attempted to do this by offering what seems like a unbelievable excuse: the "fog of memory" led him to confuse the unharmed helicopter he was actually in with another helicopter that took fire.

Really?

It doesn't take a four-star general to remember correctly whether the aircraft they were in was struck by a missile.

But perhaps Williams could have even garnered some forgiveness for even such a far-fetched alibi had he squeezed even a scintilla of emotion into his written and oral apologies. This is where Williams and so many celebrities have gone wrong when the right words could actually do a lot to pull their feet out of the fire.

From Paula Deen to Amy Pascal, it's amazing how many public apologies are such bloodless, over-calculated nothingburgers that they do more harm than good.

Imagine had Williams spent more than just a minute at an anchor desk-perhaps even a good 10 minutes in a YouTube video, or even a whole hour on "Dateline NBC"-really speaking from the heart (or faking such sincerity).

Be authentic, even vulnerable. Agonize a little. Don't cry if it doesn't come naturally, but emote as if your career depends on it because-guess what?-it does.

Last year provided a decent example of a star who managed to do this correctly. Recall the accusations of homophobia Jonah Hill faced when he uttered some unfortunate epithets in a TMZ video. He went on "The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon" and either gave a performance even better than his role in "Moneyball" or resembled an actual choked-up, torn-up human being.

What if Williams had dropped the robo-anchor persona and, rather than saying he got confused, spoke at length on camera about what really happened that day. The sight of a genuinely repentant individual could go a long way to repairing his reputation.

All this criticism of Williams may sound unsympathetic, but to the contrary: If he makes the right moves, a man who by all other indications is a good person who, like all of us sometimes, made an unfortunate mistake can turn this around. It's not too late to save his career.

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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US gains 257K jobs, unemployment rate ticks up to 5.7 pct.

WASHINGTON — U.S. employers hired at a stellar pace last month, wages rose by the most in six years, and Americans responded by streaming into the job market to find work.

The Labor Department said Friday that the economy gained a seasonally adjusted 257,000 jobs in January, and added far more in previous months than originally estimated. Businesses added 414,000 jobs in November, the government now says, the most in 17 years. Total job gains in December were also revised higher, to 329,000, up from 252,000.

Average hourly wages, meanwhile, jumped 12 cents to $24.75, the biggest gain since September 2008. In the past year, hourly pay has increased 2.2 percent.

The unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent from 5.6 percent. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. More Americans began looking for jobs, though not all found work. Their job hunting suggests they are more confident about their prospects.

That is ahead of inflation, which rose just 0.7 percent in 2014. The sharp drop in gas prices in the past year has held down inflation and boosted Americans' spending power. Still, wages typically increase at a 3.5 percent pace in a fully healthy economy.

Strong hiring pushes up wages as employers compete for fewer workers. Job gains have now averaged 336,000 a month for the past three months, the best three-month pace in 17 years. Just a year ago, the three-month average was only 197,000.

The Federal Reserve is closely monitoring wages and other job market data as it considers when to begin raising the short-term interest rate it controls from a record low near zero. The Fed has kept rates at record lows for more than six years to help stimulate growth. Most economists think the central bank will start boosting rates as early as June.

Steady economic growth has encouraged companies to keep hiring. The economy expanded at a 4.8 percent annual rate during spring and summer, the fastest six-month pace in a decade, before slowing to a still-decent 2.6 percent pace in the final three months of 2014.

There are now 3.2 million more Americans earning paychecks than there were 12 months ago. That lifts consumer spending, which drives about 70 percent of economic growth.

More hiring, along with sharply lower gasoline prices, has boosted Americans' confidence and spending power. Consumer confidence jumped in January to its highest level in a decade, according to a survey by the University of Michigan. And Americans increased their spending during the final three months of last year at the fastest pace in nearly nine years.

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Brian Williams' self-inflicted wound helps arm NBC's critics

Brian Williams is inevitably going to be criticized by lots of couch-bound observers who have never reported from a war zone (including yours truly), but given the forces eager to pounce on any slip by the news organization he represents, he has committed perhaps the worst kind of self-inflicted wound.

The NBC anchor's faulty and seemingly self-aggrandizing "memory" about his stint reporting from Iraq in 2003 pushes enough hot buttons to create a perfect storm of bad publicity. And NBC News has once again looked tardy, at best, in formulating a PR strategy in response to bad news, as it was during transitions at "Today" and "Meet the Press."

Williams has benefited from coming across as a likable anchor - as comfortable throwing out one-liners on a talkshow as he is delivering the news. But he has stepped into the proverbial hornets' nest, for reasons both of his own making and beyond his control.

Williams' embellishment of his experience is particularly damaging coming from a journalist. Essentially, his account has reduced him to the role of unreliable witness, somebody whose version of an event was exposed as being significantly at odds with the facts.

But the real problem is that the story itself - dealing with the military - hands a cudgel to those already inclined to hold a grudge against or distrust NBC News, which explains the almost-gleeful tone of the coverage on Websites like The Drudge Report and Breitbart.com.

Part of that has nothing to do with Williams. NBC happens to be affiliated with MSNBC, whose liberal profile and politics has made it a favorite target of conservatives. Although the two operate separately, they are part of the same corporate family and share talent, allowing many to conflate NBC and MSNBC into a single entity, feeding the perception of a liberal "mainstream media" that can't be trusted.

Those same quadrants were positively overjoyed when Dan Rather was involved in a report about then-President George W. Bush's National Guard service that hastened his exit from CBS News. And while Williams is unlikely to experience anything that serious in terms of the fallout, there's no doubt this cloud will linger over him for a while and be used to discredit or diminish both NBC News and its anchorman the next time the division is involved in something that irks the usual suspects.

Thus far, Williams' explanation of why he would foul up the story sounds like more of an evasion than a response, which won't hasten making the controversy go away. Certainly, the 12-year time lapse hardly covers mixing up something as memorable as being aboard a helicopter that was actually forced to land after having been struck by ground fire.

Finally, there's NBC News, which after awkwardly mishandling baton passes at "Meet the Press" and "Today" needed to look decisive in either disciplining Williams or giving him a vote of confidence. Admittedly, the story keeps changing -- with a helicopter pilot backing up part of what Williams has said on Thursday -- but either way, a guy who looked like the least of the division's problems has now added to its woes.

There's an old saying that just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that people aren't out to get you. But in this case, the reverse also applies: Just because people are out to get you doesn't mean that they're automatically wrong. On that score, Williams' Iraq war story is the epitome of an unforced error by providing his critics, even the unfair ones, legitimate ammunition.

© 2015 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

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AG jabs Narcan kit maker over steep price hikes

The Attorney General's Office yesterday contacted the maker of the drug used to reverse the effects of heroin and opioid painkiller overdoses, asking why its price has risen dramatically in the midst of a spike in overdose deaths.

In a letter to Amphastar Pharmaceuticals CEO Jack Zhang, First Assistant Attorney General Chris Barry-Smith noted "the number of fatalities surged to hundreds in just a few months" last year, prompting former Gov. Deval Patrick to declare a public health emergency and institute regulatory changes that made Amphastar's drug naloxone immediately available to every first responder in the state.

Since then, the price per kit, known by the brand name Narcan, which contains two doses of naloxone and an atomizer to create an "off-label" nasal spray, has soared from $44.48 last June to $101.98, said Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan.

"So many people increasingly depend on this life-saving drug," Attorney General Maura Healey told the Herald. "I don't want someone to unnecessarily profiteer from a public health crisis."

In an email yesterday, Jason Shandell, president of California-based Amphastar, said the company does not manufacture, market or sell a naloxone kit, so the prices Sullivan cited are likely charged by a distributor. But he added: "I am confident that we can assist the state of Massachusetts in a similar way that we did with New York, as we are committed to public safety and assisting the government where we can."

New York's attorney general, who two months ago lambasted Amphastar for increasing the price of naloxone, yesterday announced an agreement that provides a $6 rebate per dose on the drug's cost to first responders, and raise the rebate to match any increase in the wholesale price of naloxone over the next year.

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The Ticker

1,750 RadioShack stores to also be Sprint locations

RadioShack Corp., the 94-year-old consumer-electronics chain, filed for bankruptcy with a plan to turn about half of its 4,000 stores into Sprint Corp. locations and close the rest.

The company said it has an agreement to sell 1,500 to 2,400 of its locations to a unit of Standard General LP, its biggest shareholder.

Standard General has a deal with wireless carrier Sprint to set up stores-within-stores at as many as 1,750 locations. The rest will be closed under a deal with a liquidator, Hilco Merchant Resources. The company employs about 21,000 people, full and part time.

According to a Bloomberg report Tuesday, Amazon has been considering using some of RadioShack's brick-and-mortar sites for package pickup and drop-off and to showcase its hardware line-up.

Hamburg resigns as FDA chief

After nearly six years as FDA commissioner, Margaret Hamburg announced her resignation from the embattled Food and Drug Administration yesterday in an email to staff. She said the agency's chief scientist, Stephen Ostroff, will serve as acting head of FDA. While seen as stabilizing the FDA after a series of short-term leaders, Hamburg also leaves the agency amid unfinished projects and potential changes. Her successor will have to complete food safety and labeling reforms and contend with a Republican-controlled Congress focused on streamlining drug reviews.

Developer of proposed New Bedford casino in talks with Foxwoods

Developers of a proposed resort casino in Massachusetts on the New Bedford waterfront say Foxwoods is among the gambling companies they are in discussions with to operate the facility.

Former NBA commissioner David Stern, an adviser to KG Urban Enterprises, told Massachusetts regulators yesterday that the company requests a 60-day extension to complete negotiations. He said the New York-based development firm also is in talks with two other casino operators but declined to name them.

Today

• Labor Department releases employment data for January.
• Federal Reserve releases consumer credit data for December.
• Boston Realty Advisors announced that it has appointed Whitney E. Gallivan, left, as partner and managing director of its retail real estate division. Prior to joining Boston Realty Advisors, she worked in the capital markets group at HFF. Gallivan spent the bulk of her career at WS Development, the largest privately held retail developer in the nation.

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Data of 80M Anthem customers stolen

The computer breach at the country's second-largest insurer is the latest attack on a health care company as hackers aim their sights at valuable information found in medical records, one expert said.

"Everyone in health care knows it's a problem; everyone in health care is taking it very seriously," said John Halamka, chief information officer at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. "Protecting patient data is our mission, but the problem is getting harder to solve than ever."

Yesterday, Anthem Inc., which covers more than 37 million people throughout the country, said data for about 80 million customers were stolen, including names, Social Security numbers, birthdates and street addresses, in a "very sophisticated" attack. Bloomberg reported the company is eyeing Chinese state-sponsored hackers.

Halamka said medical records are an inviting target to hackers. On the black market, medical records go for about $150 each, compared to a dollar for a credit card.

"What we're talking about with medical identity theft is a health care shopping spree; I can get the surgery I need, the health care I can't afford," he said.

Halamka said Beth Israel is spending roughly $3 million a year to keep patient data safe.

"Every day when I wake up, security is one of the first things that I think of," he said.

Anthem does not write policies in Massachusetts, but residents who work for companies based in other states may be affected, according to the state Division of Insurance. Attorney General Maura Healey's office plans to investigate the scope of the data breach in Massachusetts.

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Staples merger to cut stores

Hundreds to as many as a thousand Staples and Office Depot store closings are expected if federal regulators sign off on the planned $6.3 billion merger of the nation's two largest office supplies chains.

With about half of their combined 3,200-plus U.S. stores within five miles of each other, Citi analyst Kate McShane estimates more than 500 locations could be closed. "We think store closings are likely to be announced down the road, once the deal is approved by the (Federal Trade Commission) and closed," McShane said.

Those closings would be on top of ones already planned by the individual companies, which are downsizing their retail footprint as they struggle to compete with online rivals. Staples has about 55 stores slated to be closed out of 225 it previously announced as part of its retail "reinvention." Office Depot has about 235 stores remaining to be shuttered out of 400 planned closures, according to McShane.

The store closings would be a small part of the estimated $1 billion-plus in annual cost savings that the two companies expect by the end of the third year after a merger closed.

"Store closings and real estate optimization as well as sales initiatives may bear fruit over time, but for now sales and margins continue to decline," said Carol Levenson, director of research, at Gimme Credit, a corporate bond research service.

About 1,000 store closings — either voluntary or forced by the FTC — are expected by Janney Capital Markets analyst David Strasser. That would save the merged company 
$350 million-plus in rent expenses, he said.

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UMass names presidential search committee

DARTMOUTH — University of Massachusetts trustees have named a 21-member search committee to find a new president for the five-campus system.

The committee established Friday at the trustees' meeting at UMass Law School in Dartmouth includes trustees, faculty, administrators, students and alumni.

The university is seeking a replacement for President Robert Caret who is stepping down June 30 to become chancellor of the University System of Maryland.

The committee will be chaired by Robert Manning, chairman of MFS Investment Management, the former chairman of the trustees, and a 1984 graduate of UMass-Lowell.

Trustees Chairman Victor Woolridge called the committee "distinguished and diverse."

Woolridge promised a national search that is "open and thorough."

The search committee will make recommendations to the trustees, who hope to make a final selection by July 1.

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