Benz with 449 hp is a head-turner

Here's what a friend of mine had to say about the 2015 Mercedes-Benz S550 4­Matic Coupe: "It looks like it's going 100 mph sitting still!"

This handsome and fast coupe's interior is elegantly trimmed in "Designo" Napa leather with piano black lacquer solid surfaces and is a dream to drive. Whether set in the Econ/Comfort or performance-minded Sport mode, the S550 — formerly badged the CL — is lightning-quick and exquisitely precise.

The front seats automatically adjust as you swing through turns, keeping you and your passenger snug in the racing-inspired leather. The front seats also electronically slide forward, revealing a smallish back seat. Although it's more than a two-seater, folks in the back might be a bit squeezed. The panoramic sunroof gives the cabin an airy feeling but maintains the feline shape and slick aerodynamics of the body.

Powered by a 449-hp V­8 4.7-liter twin turbo and mated to a silky smooth seven-speed automatic transmission, the Mercedes­-Benz powers from a stop and has plenty extra when you boot the sport-styled accelerator pedal looking to move through traffic. Reset the driving mode to Sport and you feel the air-suspension stiffen and the shift-points change to make this a formidable full-sized grand tourer.

Don't mistake the S550 for a lithe sports car, though this more than 4,500-pound machine is only eight inches shorter than the full four-door sedan it shares the class with.

The all-wheel-drive melds the car to the road, providing you a sense of complete control and confidence in the car. Sweeping on and off ramps, the S550 flattens out nicely, so maintaining a good head of steam through them is a snap. Rain and wet roads are no issue and snowy terrain is easily handled with winter-mounted 
Pirelli performance snow tires. And the accurate and sure braking keeps this two-door safely grounded.

Speaking of safety, the S550 has a full array of sensors and alerts to help keep you in your lane, awake at the wheel and at an appropriate distance from cars in front of and behind you. Bird's-eye, front and rear cameras, head's-up display and blind-spot monitors help you pilot the Mercedes free and clear of danger.

Despite what appears to be a daunting electronic display, managing your listening needs, navigation and Bluetooth integration is straightforward and simple. The "Command" system only takes a short time to learn and with audible and steering wheel controls, in addition to a center stack mouse and controller wheel, setting your favorites is quick and pain-free. Cellphone integration is a one-click setup and there's no need to raise your voice to talk. The whisper-quiet interior is only interrupted when you ask the beefy engine to get going, but the reward is a gutsy roar that settles into a dynamic hum even at highway speeds.

I took it on a coast run to Portland, Maine, in Econ mode and got a reasonable 24 mpg while managing about 16 in local driving. It loves super high test gas but only requires 91 octane to keep the fuel lines happy.

With all the technology, creature comforts, craftsmanship and performance, this classy car has a delivered MSRP of $149,875 and competes in class with the BMW 6 Series and Bentley GT.

Sadly, I had to turn the test car back in, and they had to pry the key from my fingers.

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Brooks rocks lobster shoe for marathon

Brooks Running Co. has launched a limited edition Boston-themed version of its Launch 2 sneaker, just in time for the Boston Marathon.

The Lobster Launch 2 has images of the crustacean, a blue ocean midsole, rope laces and wood lace aglets that represent fishing traps.

"Through imagery of the New England lobster and product details inspired by the region's famed fishing industry, the Lobster Launch 2 embodies the toughness and resiliency of the Northeast," said Shane Downey, senior business manager.

The shoe, which is available at specialty running stores in Boston, the Brooks Running booth at the Boston Marathon expo and online, comes packaged in a white fishing net.

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Restored church worthy of worship

A growing number of shuttered churches in the Boston area have been converted to condominiums, but few have been to such beautiful effect as the former Mount Vernon Church in the Back Bay.

Built around 1891 by C. Howard Walker, the church at the corner of Beacon Street and Massachusetts Avenue was destroyed by fire in 1978. But the Gothic stone facade mercifully was spared and today frames a manicured, sun-drenched courtyard attached to the seven-story brownstone Graham Gund Architects designed in 1983.

Today, it's known as Church Court, and on the fourth floor, overlooking the courtyard, one of its 42 units is for sale for $1.35 million.

"What makes it special is it has a lot of amenities, but it's also in a historically significant building," said broker Todd Mikelonis of Charlesgate Realty Group.

The two-bedroom condo spans 1,132 square feet, with central heating and air and new bamboo floors, except in the two bathrooms, which have tile floors and glass showers.

The master suite consists of a bathroom, two large closets, and a bedroom with southern and western exposure and double-paned windows to keep city noise at bay.

The guest bedroom is smaller and has a closet with a sliding door and built-in storage space. And tucked in a hallway closet is a washer and dryer.

The renovated kitchen has a four-burner Bosch cooktop, an oven, a microwave, a dishwasher, a large refrigerator and ample cabinets — all paneled in dark wood with granite countertops.

The kitchen also has a pass-though opening to the living room, which has bay windows, track lighting and enough space for a dining area.

The unit comes with its own parking space and storage locker in the garage, which is accessible by elevator. Without the parking space, the unit would sell for $1.2 million to $1.225 million.

The condo is occupied by a tenant until June 1, making it one of eight units in the building that are currently rented.

The building is monitored by video and a 24-hour concierge who buzzes residents into the lobby, which has a sitting area and access to the courtyard.

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B.R.A. joins digital world

The Boston Redevelopment Authority has converted its 108 property leases into digital files and is preparing to audit if it has received all of the money it was owed after a scathing report last year faulted the agency for losing track of delinquent rent payments and having no centralized way to track them.

Some 100,000 pages of lease documents — most of them with tenants of BRA-owned property at the Marine Industrial Park in the Seaport District and the Charlestown Navy Yard — have been scanned and will be entered into a property management system the BRA has purchased.

The system will send agency staffers automatic reminders when lease payments are due, when deals are expiring, and if tenants owe money and are up to date on insurance. Previously, the complex lease agreements were only on paper and housed in a variety of locations.

"It's going to bring us into the 21st century," BRA Comptroller LeAnn Coleman said. "We're going to be able to proactively manage it to look at what leases have option dates that are upcoming, so we can make better decisions about what's happening with our lease portfolio."

The agency, for instance, will be able to use the system to ensure new rental rates are negotiated in advance of leases expiring, Coleman said.

In an audit last year, accounting giant KPMG found that the BRA and its subsidiary, the Economic Development Industrial Corp., had allowed a combined $5.1 million in delinquent rent to go uncollected as of last April because of the agency's lax, archaic record-keeping. By November, the BRA said it had brought the outstanding rents down to $950,000.

The audit also faulted the agency for not having a "central repository" for its documents and for lacking "internal controls" and standard business "document protocols."

The new system — which the BRA will pay $30,000 a year to license, in addition to startup costs — will also allow the BRA to easily track the hodgepodge of different payment clauses contained in leases.

Once the system is up and running, Coleman said the BRA will perform an audit to ensure it is properly billing for and collecting all payments.

"There will be no detail left unturned, believe me," Coleman said.

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Helping new grads calculate rent

With cap and gown season approaching for local colleges, a new interactive mapping tool reveals the best places for newly 
minted graduates to live based on how much of their salary would go toward rent.

"College graduates today face the challenge of entering an increasingly expensive rental market on an 
entry-level salary," said John Doherty, senior marketing manager at San Francisco's HotPads, an online apartment and home rental search engine. "That's why we created this tool — to provide clarity into where they can best afford to live in the cities where they're accepting jobs."

Grads can search interactive maps for 11 of the 
nation's largest metropolitan areas, including Boston.

After selecting their profession from a drop-down menu, they can click on the neighborhoods of each city and surrounding communities to see the median per-person monthly rent for studio to three-bedroom apartments and what percentage of their gross salary would be devoted to paying rent. HotPads used census data for full-time, 22- to 30-year-old workers with four-year college degrees for the median incomes provided for entry-level occupations.

A computer programmer making $60,000, for example, would pay 52 percent of his salary on rent in the Back Bay, where the median per-person rent is $2,600 per month, according to the HotPads map. In Dorchester, where the median per-person rent is $750, the figure drops to 15 percent.

With parents likely no longer footing the bill for rent, recent grads who want to stay in Boston and avoid the college crowds can look near Cleveland Circle, off Beacon Street in the Strathmore and Chiswick roads area of Brighton, 
according to Cari Hook, a real estate broker at Metro Realty Corp. in Brookline.

"You kind of avoid a lot of the undergrad crowds, 
because students want to be closer in general to school," Hook said. "You can find one-bedrooms ranging from $1,450 to $1,650. You can find studios for $1,150 to $1,400."

First-year medical residents coming to Boston right now to work in the Longwood Medical area are heading outside of the hospital area for rentals, 
according to Hook.

"They make $59,000, and they can't afford Brookline or Fenway anymore, so they're heading to Jamaica
Plain," she said. "Hyde Square is very good."

"It's tough right now," Hook said of the rental market, pointing to the pipeline of luxury apartments in the Fenway, Seaport District and Downtown Crossing. "We have no idea who's going to afford those. Even couples are still going to have to pay $1,500 each, and that's a lot for a starting salary."

Immediately outside of Boston, a dietician or 
nutritionist earning a $36,105 salary would find themselves paying 43 percent of that on rent in Cambridge, ($1,283 per month median per-person rent) and 30 percent in Somerville ($900).

There's an influx of 23- to 27-year-olds looking to live in Somerville's Davis Square, according to Craig Scanzio of Benoit Real 
Estate Group in that city.

"It's the place where kids want to live once they get out of college," Scanzio said. "They room together in three- and four-bedrooms, and each one is paying $800, $900 month."

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Jury orders Chrysler to pay $150M in Jeep fire death

NEW YORK — A jury in Georgia has awarded $150 million to the family of a 4-year-old boy killed when a Jeep Grand Cherokee exploded into flames three years ago after being rear-ended. The jury said Chrysler, the maker of Jeeps, must pay nearly the full amount.

Jurors in Decatur County ruled Thursday that Chrysler acted with reckless disregard for human life in selling the family of Remington "Remi" Walden a 1999 Jeep with a gas tank mounted behind the rear axle.

Walden, of Bainbridge, Georgia, was killed when the Jeep driven by his aunt was hit from behind by a pickup truck in March 2012. The fuel tank leaked, engulfing the Jeep in flames and killing the boy.

The verdict comes nearly two years after Chrysler compromised with a federal safety agency and agreed to a scaled-down recall of some older-model Jeeps with the rear-mounted tanks. The tanks have little structure to protect them if struck from behind, making them susceptible to punctures and fires.

Federal documents show that at least 75 people have died in post-crash fires because of the rear-mounted fuel tanks.

The 11-woman, one-man jury ruled after a nine day trial that Chrysler was 99 percent at fault for the crash and the pickup driver was 1 percent at fault. Jurors also determined that Chrysler failed to warn the family of the hazards of driving the Jeep. They ruled that the Waldens should get $30 million for Remi's pain and suffering and $120 million for the full value of his life, according to a verdict form.

Mike Palese, spokesman for Chrysler parent company FCA US, said the company is disappointed with the verdict and would appeal. Chrysler, he said, was prevented from presenting data submitted to federal safety regulators showing that the vehicles did not pose an unreasonable safety risk.

"The vehicles are not defective," Palese said.

Although the verdict is large, it isn't the largest judgment ever against an automaker in a personal injury case. In 1999, for example, a California jury ordered General Motors Co. to pay $4.9 billion to Patricia Anderson and Jo Tigner after their Chevrolet Malibu was rear-ended and burst into flames. In that case, four children in the back seat were severely injured. The amount was reduced on appeal to $1.2 billion.

And in 2004, a woman paralyzed when her Ford Explorer rolled over won a $369 million verdict from Ford Motor Co. That was later reduced to $83 million, which Ford eventually paid after exhausting its appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond law school, said it will be difficult for Chrysler to overturn a jury verdict, but an appeals court might reduce the amount. He questioned Chrysler's decision to take the case to trial because of the horrific nature of the crash.

Tobias said the Walden verdict is likely to lead others to sue the company or to speed along cases that are already in the system.

Chrysler has long contended that the Jeeps were no more dangerous than comparable SUVs built at the time. It used that argument to convince the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 2013 to allow it to recall 1.56 million Jeeps after the government agency initially recommended that 2.7 million be repaired. Under the recall, Chrysler agreed to install trailer hitches in the rear as an extra layer of protection.

Safety advocates have called the size of the recall and the fix inadequate. On Thursday, Clarence Ditlow, the head of the Center for Auto Safety, called on the government to reopen its investigation against Chrysler.

NHTSA spokesman Gordon Trowbridge said late Thursday that the agency monitors legal decisions and "if new information emerges, we take it into account and act appropriately."

Atlanta attorney Jim Butler argued during the trial that Remi's death resulted from the fire because of the gas tank's poor position. The child was on his way to a tennis lesson when the SUV was struck from behind.

"Numerous witnesses saw Remi struggling to escape and heard him screaming for help," the family's lawsuit alleged.

The lawsuit alleged that Chrysler placed the gas tank in a "crush zone" behind the rear axle and knew the location was dangerous, and that the company failed to protect the gas tank against rupturing.

Trial testimony showed that the compromise with safety regulators over the recall was worked out in a Chicago airport meeting between Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne, former Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and ex-NHTSA Administrator David Strickland. Ditlow noted that Strickland now works for Venable, a law firm that has represented Chrysler.

___

Durbin reported from Detroit.

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Clouds on horizon for solar projects

Municipal and large commercial solar projects in Massachusetts are being stymied by caps on net metering, which gives a credit for any unused energy they provide to the electrical grid, and incentive to install new panel arrays, advocates said yesterday.

The caps for both large private and public solar projects in National Grid territory were hit within the past two weeks, putting the state's solar industry and its 12,000 jobs at risk, said Ben Hellerstein, of Environment Massachusetts.

"We have seen the number of kilowatts of solar energy in Massachusetts increase 127 percent annually for the last three years," Hellerstein said. "Unless the Legislature and the governor raise the caps, we could see that rapid growth slow down or come to a halt."

Small solar installations, such as those on homes, are exempt from the limits.

Solar energy advocates are lobbying for the passage of a House bill that would raise the caps to 1,600 megawatts and set a goal of getting at least 20 percent of the state's electricity from solar power by 2025. Raising the caps now also would allow the state to take advantage of a 30 percent federal investment tax credit, which expires at the end of 2016, said Emily Rochon, a fellow at Boston Community Capital.

A task force set up by the Legislature is reviewing alternatives, including requiring at least 1,600 megawatts of solar energy by 2020.

"The administration is committed to working with the task force and energy community to achieve continued solar growth ... and establish a framework for a sustainable program with reasonable ratepayer costs going into the future," said Katie Gronendyke, a spokeswoman for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

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Southie industrial site slated for housing, retail

A six-block mini-community with hundreds of housing units, a grocery store and a public green is under design for a swath of unused industrial land in South Boston.

Boston developer Core Investments Inc. and real estate investment firm Ad Meliora LLC's plans for the mixed-use development at Old Colony Avenue and Dorchester Street near Andrew Square include approximately 700 housing units, mostly apartments and many of which would be targeted toward middle-class tenants, the companies said in a statement yesterday. Representatives were unavailable for comment.

The still-unnamed project also would incorporate 76,000 square feet of ground-level retail space, including a 20,000-square-foot-plus grocery store, and a 1-acre central outdoor public gathering space.

The goal is to bring economic vitality to Andrew Square by creating a walkable neighborhood with community-focused businesses, according to the development team, which is operating under the name of DJ Properties LLC.

"After working with and listening to the community in and around Andrew Square for more than four years, we have begun shaping a project that we think will be a huge improvement to the neighborhood in many ways — from the new middle-class homes to places to shop and eat, and, in addition, a large place for people to meet," DJ Properties said in a statement. "There will be better connectivity with the surrounding neighborhoods via new pedestrian ways and public streets."

The five-acre development would include eight buildings along Old Colony Avenue and Damrell Street and on either side of Alger Street, which would be extended to Dorchester Street. Vacant industrial buildings currently occupy the site, where DJ Properties has been acquiring parcels for about the past four years.

The project currently calls for two "slender" retail towers with 20 and 21 floors — and heights of 230 and 240 feet, respectively — and retail and parking at the bottom. The six other buildings would range from three to six floors. Garage parking for 450 cars and 130 surface spaces for retail customers is planned.

The project would be built in phases, with the grocery store and park constructed first.

DJ Properties, which said it has had early talks with the Boston Redevelopment Authority about the project, plans to file initial documents with the agency "in the near future."

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Test drives city to expand ParkBoston

The city is expanding its ParkBoston app to all 8,000-plus parking meters, letting drivers pay remotely with their cellphones, after a successful pilot of the program in the Back Bay.

"Thousands of Bostonians have already embraced this new and convenient technology, and expanding this service throughout the city will make the experience of paying for parking easier for each and every user," Mayor Martin J. Walsh said in a statement.

More than 15,000 people downloaded the Park­Boston app — available for iPhones and Android devices — since the pilot program launched in January. Officials plan to roll out the app to all the city's meters in phases, beginning with the rest of the Back Bay and the Fenway/Kenmore area this week, with the goal of having it completed by the end of the summer.

"Certainly the more options you give someone to pay the meter, the more often they will pay the meter," said Gina Fiandaca, commissioner of the Boston Transportation Department.

The expansion of ParkBoston comes on the heels of Walsh's announcement last week that the city would replace all parking meters with new smart meters that accept credit cards and will collect data about space usage. That project, estimated at $5 million
to $6 million, is scheduled to start by the end of the year.

The smart meters will be able to detect whether a spot is in use.

"(It will) help us strategically manage curbside space by providing information on duration of parking sessions," Fiandaca said.

That data could also be used for demand-based pricing, she said, including the possibility of extending hours or raising pricing­ near the TD Garden or Fenway Park.

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Committee to tackle wage equity

A new advisory committee tackling wage equality in Massachusetts can expect to encounter two types of CEOs: those whose hearts are in the right place, but have to be shown how to implement it, and those who must be convinced it's of value to their companies as well as society.

That's according to James Roosevelt Jr., CEO of Tufts Health Plan, one of 16 members of the committee formed by state Treasurer Deborah B. Goldberg to follow through on one of her campaign planks.

"There are CEOs for whom this is not at the top of their lists when they think about how to show value to their customers and how they differentiate their products from their competitors," Roosevelt said. "You have to have the commitment from the top of the organization that ... every factor that goes into what people are paid — men and women — will be approached with the requirement that there be true equality. It's like any other major management issue. The CEO has to be sure that his or her management team applies that principle in every hiring decision, in every promotion and every salary-setting decision."

White women in Massachusetts earn 82 cents for every $1 earned by a man, according to Goldberg. African-American women earn 61 cents, and Latina women earn 50 cents.

"Pay equity is not a partisan issue, nor solely a women's issue," Goldberg said in a statement. "It is a family issue, and it affects the economic health and well-being of our entire state."

The committee will focus on providing government agencies with tools to review their pay structures; creating a wage equality tool kit for businesses; organizing roundtables to field business input on how a public-private partnership can work; and launching a state-run equal pay website for employers and employees.

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