Greater Worcester

While business confidence in Massachusetts remained in optimistic territory in August, confidence among Central Massachusetts business owners remained pessimistic.

After more than 60 years in business, Leo's Ristorante in Worcester has started bottling and selling its family-secret salad dressing following years of customer demand. 

Developers will break ground on the project in early September.

The blur of activity includes ongoing negotiations between Steward and Massachusetts state government over a second, and larger, infusion of public funding that the company says is required to keep its hospitals here open until the sales close/

The 73-year-old restaurant chain opened its first Worcester location on Tuesday.

Platinum Fire was founded in 2010 by Robert Pereria, who built his career in fire protection systems. In the wake of the Great Recession, businesses started to reemerge, and construction became revitalized, opening the door for new structures in need of fire protection systems.

Employees at Leominster Credit Union, MetroWest Medical Center in Framingham, and Mirick O’Connell in Worcester are making strides in their careers.

More than four decades after opening their Worcester accounting firm S&G LLP in 1980, Carl Goldstein and Terry Shepherd knew it was time for a change.

Three entrenched Worcester law firms received news of a new challenger arriving from the east in July, when high-profile, Boston-based Prince Lobel Tye announced it would open a Worcester office, convincing about a dozen Bowditch lawyers to join the firm in the process.

An extended leave enables people to find their identities and focus on personal health, something they can not do in shorter chunks of time off, according to a lecturer at Harvard Business School.