Tacoma Goodwill announced today that it's named its new building the Tacoma Goodwill-Milgard Work Opportunity Center.

“The Gary E. Milgard Family Foundation has showed a continued commitment to Goodwill,” said Terry A. Hayes, Tacoma Goodwill CEO. “The foundation is a leader in seeing and meeting the needs of many, many organizations in this area.”

The announcement was part of the organization's official ground breaking today on the 63,000-square-foot facility.

The building at the corner of South 27th Street and Tacoma Avenue will include a two-floor Youth Career Center as well as a job-training and placement center and classrooms.

The project will cost about $20 million and allow Goodwill to triple its services in Pierce County over the next five years, according to a press release from the organization.

The Port of Tacoma debuted its new Web site this week.

The site – almost a year in the making – has several new features including a calendar of port events, Web streamed commission meetings and online public records request forms.

Rod Koon, the port's director of communications, said port tried to build various content for its differing audiences.

"I think we made some great progress in terms of being more transparent with commission meetings, having more content for customers and for the community providing information on various aspects of the port," Koon said.

The port spent about $75,000 of the Web site redesign, which was done by Tacoma-based Business Internet Services.

The Boeing Co. says it is switching to a 401-K-like defined contribution plan for new, non-union employees beginning next year.

The change won't affect the 525,000 Boeing workers already enrolled in the company's traditional defined benefit plan.

The new Boeing plan isn't a traditional 401-K plan, although the 401-K plan is part of the new retirement package.

Under the new plan, Boeing will contribute the equivalent of three, four or five percent of an employee's salary to a self-managed retirement account even if the employee does not contribute to that account himself.

And Boeing will also match employee retirement plan employee contributions dollar for dollar up to four percent of pay and 50 cents per dollar for any amount of employee contributions between four and eight percent of pay.

For Boeing, the new plan has the advantage of not putting the company on the hook to up its contributions to its defined benefit pension plan when the pension plan investment performance turns sour. Typically, those investment return declines happen at the worst time for the company, during an economic downturn when its profits are challenged.

Boeing's unions, which are negotiating for new contracts have said they don't welcome such a new plan because it removes the responsibility for creating a steady pension benefit from the company and places it on the employee.

A new assembly line at Boeing's Renton plant may increase its output of P-8A submarine-hunting aircraft after a U.S. Navy request for accelerated production.

The new assembly line, opened recently to produce the 737-based patrol aircraft, has the ability to produce 18 to 24 of the aircraft a year, according to Boeing officials.

The Navy has ordered 108 of the planes. They were scheduled to be delivered at the rate of 13 a year beginning in 2013.

But the grounding of 25 percent of the Navy's existing fleet of sub-hunting P-3C Orions late last year has left the Navy with a capability gap that it hopes to fill by getting more P-8As sooner.

The first of five test P-8As was tested on the ground earlier this month.

The P-8A is a derivative of the commercial 737 airliner equipped with a bomb bay and underwing missiles and a sophisticated array of underwater detection equipment and radars.

Boeing's Tukwila-based engineering and technical workers union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, has won a critical election at Spirit Aerosystems in Wichita, Kan.

Spirit technical employees voted 1,073 to 855 to keep SPEEA representing them Tuesday. Spirit is Boeing's former commercial airplane fabrication operation in Kansas. It remains a major supplier for Boeing.

Some union members had petitioned for the election. Dissatisfaction apparently stemmed from the exclusion of union workers from Spirit bonus program. The union says it will seek to modify its contract to include that bonus program.

SPEEA, which faces negotiations to renew its contract with Boeing in the Puget Sound area this fall, also won an election in January in Utah where engineers voted to keep the union representing them at Boeing.

Amazon.com Inc. said today it bought Fabric.com to expand its selection of sewing and craft products.

The Web site sells fabrics, patterns and sewing tools.

Amazon said Marietta, Georgia-based Fabric.com will continue to function as a stand-alone operation, offering lines of fabric for apparel, quilting and home decor.