Pierce County remains among the least expensive areas for office rentals in the Puget Sound region, according to quarterly numbers released today by CB Richard Ellis.

The average rate for fully serviced Class A office space in Tacoma and Fife was $22.09 per square foot for the third quarter. Downtown Seattle topped the list at $36.50 per square foot, and the average for the region was $30.89.

CB Richard Ellis marked the vacancy rate for space at 10.96 percent, near the regional average of 11.7 percent. Downtown Seattle marked a vacancy rate of 9.2 percent, while the region enclosing Snohomish County showed 19.9 percent.

For industrial space, Tacoma and Fife showed a vacancy rate of 9.8 percent, well above the 5.5 percent regional average. Again the area marked the lowest average asking rate, at 36 cents per square foot, below the regional average of 54 cents.
Tacoma and Fife have 900,000 square feet of industrial space under construction, nearly half of the total being built in the region at 2.1 million square feet.

Historically, the region has seen a small increase in the office vacancy rate, at 11.7 percent up from 10.9 percent in the second quarter and 10.5 percent in the third quarter of last year. The average cost, at $30.70, is up from $30.16 in the second quarter and $28.39 a year ago.

The regional industrial vacancy rate, 5.5 percent is down from 5.8 percent in the second quarter and 6.7 percent a year ago, CB Richard Ellis said.

Gov. Chris Gregoire will address the 4rd annual Washington State International Trade Update Luncheon on October 23. The gathering, from 11:00 a.m. until 1:30 p.m., will be held at Tacoma’s Hotel Murano.

Gregoire will speak on the latest trade performance and the importance of international trade to the state economy, according to a release from the World Trade Center Tacoma, the event sponsor. A panel discussion on exports will follow.

Union Bank of California is hosting the event, supported by Washington Realtors, the Port of Tacoma, Pierce County and City of Tacoma.

The luncheon is geared toward community and business leaders and international officials as well as the general public.

The cost to attend the luncheon is $40 for students and WTCTA members, $50 for non-WTCTA members and walk-in guests and $400 for corporate table. For more information, visit www.wtcta.org.

The new Nordstrom at the Tacoma Mall is open. Crowds of shoppers packed the parking lots and the mall entrance in anticipation of the updated department store.

It was worth it. Shoppers declared the new store “beautiful” and way overdue for the South Sound.

"We think it's awesome," said Nancy Lentgis of Olympia. "It's been a long time coming for this area."

Lentgis said the store feels more contemporary and has more choices for shoppers. She was shopping with friend Teri Girard for shoes for an upcoming wedding.

Indeed, the store is bright with new light fixtures and merchandise displays. The makeup counters are lower and more spread out, giving shoppers a better view of the merchandise.

All of the women’s clothing is collected on the second floor with men’s and kids’ still on the first.

So many people showed up for the opening that I had to park across the street. The store was packed with hundreds of shoppers taking in the new design. I checked out the most important departments first: shoes and cosmetics.

The shoe department includes lots of new designers that weren’t at the other store.

I admired, twice, a pair of burgundy patent leather Paul Green shoes that sell for $275. Rows of boots lined the entrance. The hosiery department is collected on the opposite side of the store, with a large tights selection. (I bought two pairs.)

The cosmetics department was overflowing with customers and employees, who were eager to give demonstrations of the products.

I got a quick primer on the pressed powered at the Nars counter. (I bought eye shadow in black and white.) I think much of the excitement for the new store came from the employees, who were thrilled to have a shiny new place to work each day.

The new store is 138,000 square feet. The original Nordstrom at Tacoma Mall opened in 1966 just down the mall and is now closed for business. It will be home to new stores and restaurants when the mall renovates that wing of the shopping center.

With other airlines reporting traffic declines last month, SeaTac's Alaska Airlines managed to eke out a .2 percent increase in traffic in September.

The airline reported today that its September traffic was 1.430 billion revenue passenger miles, an increase from 1.427 billion rpms last year. A revenue passenger mile is one mile flown by a paying passenger.

That traffic increase comes in spite of capacity cut by five percent in September.

Other major airlines have reported traffic declines for September: American, -9.1 percent; Continental, -10.9%, Southwest, -8 percent; AirTran, -2 percent and Northwest, .5 percent.

The percentage of seats filled by paying passengers, the so-called "load factor," increased to 75.8 percent last month compare with 71.8 percent in the same month last year.

At Alaska's Horizon Air sister airline, traffic decreased by 15.7 percent on a 17.2 percent capacity decrease.

Horizon has retired all of its Q200 37-seat aircraft and plans to retire all of its CRJ-700 jets to standardize on its Q400 high-efficiency turboprop. The Q400 has 76 seats.

The domestic economic slowdown took a small toll on Boeing this week with Southwest Airlines' announcement that it would take delivery of only 10 of the 14 737s it had ordered from Boeing next year.

The Dallas-based discount carrier, Boeing's biggest 737 customer, is slowing its growth as demand slackens for airline service.

The airline said it won't cancel the order for four additional 737s. It is deferring their delivery until 2016.

The delivery delay follows two consecutive months of lower passenger traffic for Southwest, the first since 2004.

Horizon Air has announced it wants to start service from Snohomish County's Paine Field sometime before next summer.

The SeaTac-based regional airline said Thursday it is considering initial service to Spokane and Portland.

The airline would use 76-seat Bombardier Q400 turboprops for the new service.

The airline's announcement came after the Everett City Council voted last month 6-0 in favor of scheduled operations at the field.

While the city is encouraging new service, Snohomish County, which owns the airport, is doing the opposite.

The county has told airline operators that while it can't stop them from flying from the airport, it doesn't intend to expand or modernize its old terminal at county expense to support the service.

Allegiant Airlines earlier this year announced that it too wants to begin service from Paine. Allegiant would fly MD-80 jets to vacation destinations such as Las Vegas.

Neighborhood opposition is strong against airline service at the former Air Force base that is home to the world's largest aircraft factory, Boeing's Everett assembly plant, and to major aircraft overhaul facilities.

Having airline service to Paine would save Everett residents what can be a nearly two-hour auto trip to Sea-Tac Airport during rush hour traffic.

Alaska Airlines is bragging today about a September on-time arrival performance that's the best in a decade.

By the airlines' own unofficial calculations, 87.8 percent of its flights arrived within 15 minutes of their schedule last month.

That's up dramatically from the 73.3 percent on-time record it achieved in Sept. 2007.

But although Alaska's performance is stellar for the airline, it didn't advance it much relative to other U.S. carriers.

The same factors that helped Alaska improve its on-time performance last month, relatively good weather, a reduction in the number of flights in the air and no major air traffic control snarls, also boosted other airlines' performance.

According to FlightStats.com records, Alaska was 12th among 38 U.S. airlines last month. Flightstats, which uses slightly different measures than Alaska to count up on-time arrivals, said Alaska had an 86.96 percent on-time rating last month.

At the top of their list was perennial on-time king Hawaiian Airlines with 94.10 percent of its flights on-time. Frontier Airlines was second with a 92.75 percent on-time performance.

Horizon Air, Alaska's regional sister airline, was fourth with 91.20 percent of its flights on time. That's just .01 percent behind the third place carrier, Mesaba Aviation.

Among major carriers, American Airlines was the least punctual last month with a 79 percent on-time record.

These figures, compiled by the airline and by FlightStats, aren't the official Department of Transportation figures reported earlier this week, which lag the unofficial figures by a month.

The demise of Aloha Airlines and ATA has created a new market for Boeing in Hawaii.

Hawaiian Airlines Thursday introduced into service the first of four additional Boeing 717 jets it is leasing from Boeing Capital Corp.

The four jets will augment the airline's interisland fleet of 11 717s.

Since the bankruptcy liquidation of its biggest rival, Aloha Airlines, Hawaiian has been struggling to meet the demand for between-islands transport. Indianapolis-based ATA, which provided service to some of the outer islands from the mainland, also went bankrupt earlier this year.

The airline has even used one of its 274-seat, twin-aisle, long-range Boeing 767s for 18-minute flights between the islands.

The airline ordinarily uses those aircraft for long-distance trips to the mainland, to Australia and the Phillipines.

The photos of the "new" plane don't show its registration number, but it would be a good bet that the planes being added to Hawaiian's fleet once were part of Midwest Airlines' fleet. Midwest is retrenching and returning some of its 717s to Boeing.

The 717 is the last commercial plane Boeing produced in the former McDonnell Douglas plant in Long Beach, Calif.

Before Boeing acquired McDonnell Douglas in 1997, the plane was called the MD-95.

New figures are out for Boeing's third quarter aircraft production, and the toll the Machinists Union strike is taking are clearly evident.

The company said it produced 84 airliners in the July through September quarter. Among those were 67 737s, 4 747s, 2 767s and 11 777s.

The 737 production figures clearly show the strike's effect. At Boeing's previous production rates, about 31 planes a month at its Renton plant, the third quarter production should have been about 93 planes instead of the 67 built.

Under non-strike conditions, the production of 767s would have been 3 instead of 2, 777 production would have been 19 instead of 11, and 747 production would have been five instead of four.

The strike by 27,000 International Assosication of Machinists and Aerospace Workers began Sept. 6.

No new talks are scheduled between the company and the union.