BJ's Restaurant and Brewhouse will open a new location at Tacoma Mall in September, the mall's owner, Simon Property Group announced today.

BJ's will occupy a building in the mall's new lifestyle section. The mall plans to announce yet another full-service restaurant later this year, said the mall's marketing director, Sarah Bonds.

The lifestyle section being built on the mall's south side, will feature seven new retailers, the mall management said. The names of those retailers are set to be announced later this summer.

BJ's originated in Santa Ana, Calif., in 1978 and then spread to several locations along the California coast. The chain now has multiple locations on the West Coast and in other states throughout the country.

The restaurant is expanding to Washington with locations at the Tacoma Mall and in Southcenter in Tukwila.

This just in from Washington State University:

John Rodenberg, certified business advisor for WSU’s Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Tacoma service center was awarded the Ron Battles Excellence Award at today’s meeting of the SBDC Statewide Advisory Board.

The award, presented by SBDC State Director Brett Rogers, was given in recognition of Rodenberg's quality service to his clients in Tacoma and Pierce
County, the school said in a release.

"John was selected for this award based on a number of glowing client nominations, his body of work demonstrating commitment to excellence, and his 'above and beyond' approach to clients," Rogers said.

The Ron Battles Excellence Award was conceived as a means to honor the late Ron Battles legacy as a gifted business adviser and to recognize in others the same qualities Battles displayed in his nine-year career with the SBDC. Battles died in October 2005.

Rodenberg provides no-fee, confidential advising to clients on loan application packages, forecasting, all aspects of debt and equity funding, written business plans, business turn-around, market positioning for small companies, developing new groups of customers, managing production costs, site selection for retailers, expansion from a single location to multiple units, planning for trade shows and other topics.

Rodenberg operates his center on the campus of Bates Technical College in downtown Tacoma.

Organizers described it as a meet-and-greet, and that’s what people did late in the working day on Thursday in the Dome District. Or SoDo. Or DoDi. Call it what you will – it’s the area roughly surrounding the Tacoma Dome.

The question on the table (along with a nicely catered spread of cheese, crackers, fruit. shrimp and sweets aplenty) was: “What happens next?”

Representatives from the City of Tacoma, Cross District Council and University of Washington Tacoma were there, as were business owners and managers from retail, service, development and manufacturing firms.

Tacoma architect Jim Merritt did much of the talking – to 50 or so folks who attended the gathering, held at the eclectic furnishing, jewelry and design shop Dragonfly. The tone of the meeting seemed more social than serious, which seems like a good way to get something started.

What happens next – will be more gatherings, particularly under the aegis of the regularly assembled Dome District Council. What happens next – concerns development in the area, and planning with people in mind, and assisting the city and the LeMay Museum construct plans for retail and other forms of economic growth in the area.

Among the quotes I heard (in no particular order):
• “Our problem is that a lot of groups are working in isolation. We need to figure out a way that we can all be vested in the future.”
• “We just want to show how we can collaborate on a vision.”
• “There is fear of what these people will do – Russell, DaVita, Brown & Haley. If we can get some clarity of our vision, I think we can keep them here.”
• “We’re still wearing the laurels of 15 years ago. Where are we going now?”
• “Instead of grumbling about the results, let’s make it happen.”
• “We have to gather back our community. It’s people first.”

Not to sound like a broken record - but that’s just what it is. Again.

With oil prices up to $126 a barrel today, and with a confrontation looming with OPEC-member Venezuela, the fallout fell in Tacoma bringing yet another all-time-high average price for a gallon of regular-grade gasoline.

This morning, according to AAA, the price hit $3.758, up more than two cents from yesterday’s $3.737.

Today’s price here in town is up from $3.50 a month ago and $3.441 a year ago.

Folks in Bellingham are paying the state’s highest rate today, at $3.85, while Spokanites enjoy the lowest, at $3.632.

More than 80 percent of flights at Sea-Tac Airport arrived on time during April, new figures show.

Statistic's from Portland's Flightstats.com show 80.62 percent of flights at Sea-Tac arrived within 15 minutes of their schedule, the definition the federal Department of Transportation uses for on-time arrivals.

That figure placed Sea-Tac eleventh among 40 domestic airports Flightstats tracked. First on the list was Salt Lake City with an 86.58 on-time percentage. Second was Portland with 83.57 percent of flights arriving on schedule.

At the bottom of the list were the New York area's three airports, La Guardia, JFK and Newark.

Just 55.43 percent of La Guardia's flights were on time in April. JFK had a 67.1 percent on-time record, and Newark Liberty Airport posted a 68.03 percent on-time figure.

One of the anamolies of the report is that Chicago's Midway Airport was seventh on the list with 81.51 percent on-time arrivals, while that same city's O'Hare Airport ranked 37th with just 69.37 percent on-time arrivals.

Reporters got an advance tour of Southcenter's new quarter billion dollar addition Thursday morning. The new structure is in many ways impressive with its dining terraces, expansive views of Mount Rainier and it upscale shops.

But much still has to be done before the July 25 grand opening -- perhaps too much.

Workers still were putting up wallboard, laying tile, erecting supporting structures in the common areas Thursday.

That work's bound to take weeks more before its done. And then the 75 new merchants have to build out their spaces, which now are mere bare bones shells without ceilings, floor coverings, fixtures and so forth.

Westfield says contractors are actually ahead of schedule. I suspect, however, that contractors will be putting in more than a few all-nighters to meet the opening day deadline.

Here are more drawings of the completed project:

This view shows the south side of the center with the 90-foot glass wall of the atrium at the center. Flanking the main entrance are restaurants with outdoor seating during warm weather. On the second floor terrace above is outdoor dining for the food court. The third floor terrace is reserved for special events. The exterior is a mix of brick that almost but not quite matches the brick of the existing mall, stone facade accents and "wood" beams and supports. The main beams appear to be glue laminated wooden beams like those that support the Tacoma Dome, but the wood appears to be a veneer that sheaths steel beams. Escalators ascend through the sunlit lobby to the 16-screen AMC theater on the third level.

This shows the interior of the food court with the large atrium window beyond. By placing the food court on the second level and the cinema on the third, Westfield is attempting to draw customers upward to the second level shops. Two and three-level malls in the early days suffered from the failure of customers to venture to the higher levels to shop, relegating second and third-floor merchants to second class status. The new mall also attempts to deal with that issue by giving some larger merchants such as Borders, H&M and Forever XXI two-story stores with internal escalators which give those merchants twice the mall frontage and move customers of these popular spots to the higher floors.

This is shows the interior first floor space that parallels the long mall space in the existing shopping center. Note that the corridors are not as wide as in malls built in the '60s and '70s. Developers found that making the mall corridors too wide encouraged shoppers to browse only one side of the mall. Narrower corridors will encourage shoppers to cross and recross the mall to inspect something that catches their eye.

Northwest Airline this week announced it will begin flying between Sea-Tac Airport and Beijing beginning in March next year.

Northwest will compete on that route with China's Hainan Airlines, which begins Beijing-Seattle flights this summer.

With the addition of the Beijing flight, Northwest will have four international destinations from Sea-Tac: Amsterdam, London, Tokyo and Beijing.

In a little more than a year, Sea-Tac has added more than a handful of international flights to its repertoire.

Those include Air France to Paris, Lufthansa to Frankfurt, AeroMexico to Mexico City, Horizon to Prince George, B.C., Hainan to Beijing and Northwest to London and Beijing

Boeing added 32 airliners to its order book this week bringing its year-to-date total to 378.

Those orders included two 777s from Asiana Airlines of Korea, four 777s from El Al Israel Airlines, six 737s from Oman Air and 20 737s from unidentified buyers.

Boeing identified the Republic of Iraq as the buyer of 30 737s previously attributed to an unidentified buyer.

The new orders bring 737 orders to 261; 747 orders to two; 777 orders to 36 and 787 orders to 79. The company has no orders for its 767 this year.