North County

Athol-based tool manufacturer L.S. Starrett felt the bite of the international market's downturn in its fiscal year 2015 report with a decline in sales and a large drop in net earnings.

Advanced Cable Ties of Gardner will use an $8 million tax-exempt bond from MassDevelopment to build an addition and add new equipment, the state's economic development agency said today.

Behavioral health services provider Health Partners New England is building a 104-bed treatment facility in Devens after buying more than seven acres of land from MassDevelopment, the two organizations announced Wednesday.

It's no mistake that, throughout Massachusetts, there's more hospital signage showing up either on commercial sites, or on empty land that will give rise to satellite facilities under the umbrella of larger health care systems. That, in turn, is creating new business for architects and construction companies.

Even before he showed up on campus to start his new job in mid-July, Fitchburg State University's new president, Richard Lapidus, had met with major local players such as Mayor Lisa Wong and Roy Nascimento, president and CEO of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce.

More than 14,000 Massachusetts residents have received checks for $205.52 each from Fidelity Bank of Fitchburg as part of a relief fund settlement reached last year with the state, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin announced Friday.

Health care workers at Nashoba Valley Medical Center, in Ayer, who voted to form a union with 1199SEIU in January 2015 will receive a pay increase and other benefit enhancements as part of a new union contract agreement reached with Steward Health Care.

Devens-based AMSC more than doubled revenue in the first quarter of fiscal year 2015, while cutting losses and expanding cash reserves, the company announced Wednesday.

Citing pay that is below average for nurses at comparable hospitals and staffing procedures that make work hours unpredictable, members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) at Nashoba Valley Medical Center in Ayer will hold an informational picket outside the hospital this afternoon.

The past two years haven't always been good for small community hospitals. Challenged to keep up with technological advances and squeezed by competition from larger health systems as they struggle for reimbursement, three have closed across the state.