wbjournal.com | January 12, 2026 | Worcester Business Journal 3
Worcester Business Journal (ISSN#1063-6595) is published bi-
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Worcester Business Journal
WBJ
A division of:
Editor, Brad Kane,
bkane@wbjournal.com
Managing Editor, Eric Casey,
ecasey@wbjournal.com (real estate,
banking & finance)
Staff Writer
Mica Kanner-Mascolo,
mkannermascolo@wbjournal.com
(manufacturing, health care, education)
Contributors
Sloane M. Perron, Sara Bedigian, Emily
Micucci, Livia Gershon
Photographers
Matt Wright, Edd Cote, Christine
Peterson
Research Director,
Stephanie Meagher,
smeagher@nebusinessmedia.com
Research Assistant, Heide Martin,
hmartin@nebusinessmedia.com
Production Director, Kira Beaudoin,
kbeaudoin@wbjournal.com
General Manager
Kris Prosser, kprosser@wbjournal.com
Senior Accounts Manager
Christine Juetten,
cjuetten@wbjournal.com
Accounts Manager
Timothy Doyle
tdoyle@wbjournal.com
Special Product Manager
Regina Stillings
rstillings@nebusinessmedia.com
Human Resources Manager,
Tracy Rodwill,
trodwill@nebusinessmedia.com
Director of Finance, Sara Ward,
sward@nebusinessmedia.com
Accounting Clerk, Rae Rogers,
rrogers@nebusinessmedia.com
Event Coordinator,
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pattyh@wbjournal.com
Director of Audience Development
and Operations, Leah Allen,
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Business Office Assistant,
Nicole Dunn,
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Publisher, Peter Stanton
pstanton@nebusinessmedia.com
Chief Operating Officer,
Andrea Tetzlaff
atetzlaff@mainebiz.biz
President & CEO, Tom Curtin
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TA B L E O F C O N T E N T S
4 Central Mass. In Brief
11 Focus on Best of Business awards
30 List: Largest labor unions
31 Advice
32 Movers & Shakers
33 Opinion
34 Shop Talk: The Ground Round
4 Devens firm's AI megadeal
Commonwealth Fusion is teaming up
with the world's most valuable company
to develop an AI model to advance fusion
technology.
31 Why most business podcasts fail,
and how to beat the odds
Advice columnist Julia Becker Collins,
chief operating officer of Vision, details
the ways business podcasts can have
staying power and feed into companies'
bottom lines.
P
ublic documents hold so many
secrets, it's hard to tell all their
stories.
is edition's cover story
is based on a public records
request WBJ Managing Editor Eric Casey
made of the Massachusetts Division of
Capital Asset Management and Main-
tenance. Aer news broke last year of a
Marlborough-based bid beating out more
than a dozen others to develop the State
Police's coveted $200-million crime lab
project, Casey was curious why DCAMM
chose that one, especially aer Worcester
officials cried foul when one based in the
city wasn't selected.
Casey's public records request became
his "Marlborough's $200M win" story on
page 6. is in-depth story is largely cen-
tered on the strengths of the Marlborough
proposal and how the project and its 300
life sciences jobs will bolster the city, while
touching on some of the flaws in the other
proposals. Aside from this main narra-
tive, the DCAMM document and Casey's
reporting tells many more stories.
From just studying the large chart on
page 7, you can see all the developers and
large properties champing at the bit to
land a project like this. Most of them cen-
ter around existing buildings, and you can
see the office vacancies created by EMC
Corp.'s slow exit from the region is causing
a problem. e former Westborough head-
quarters of BJ's Wholesale Club was most
recently approved for a 715,000-square-
foot, four building life sciences develop-
ment, but that property owner was now
looking to the crime lab for the land
instead. You can see the inherent chal-
lenges an urban area like Worcester faces
compared to the more suburban Marlbor-
ough, as one of the Worcester-based bids
struggled to identify enough affordable
parking spaces for the crime lab's workers.
Moreover, Casey's story shows the intense
outside interest the Central Massachusetts
economy is generating, as developers from
Virginia, New York City, Boston, and Lex-
ington all saw potential money to be made
e treasurers hidden
in public documents
I N T H I S I S S U E
in the region.
Producing well-research stories based on
public documents has been a hallmark of
journalism and WBJ for a long time now,
and there are many more to come. For now,
flip to page 6 and read the many stories the
State Police crime lab bid is telling.
– Brad Kane, editor
W
