A former Weyerhaeuser Co. executive and his wife have become the first residents of a redeveloped former industrial site near Tacoma's Point Defiance Park.

Bill and Polly Blankenship's home is the first of what developer Mike Cohen hopes will be hundreds of residential units on the site of the former Asarco copper smelter. The Blankenships moved into their home last month.

Their home occupies one of 36 single-family home sites on the hill overlooking the smelter's former site. That hill was the home of the smelter's 562-foot smoke stack. Explosive demolition turned that stack into a large pile of bricks in 1993.

The smelter, which specialized in smelting high-arsenic ore for nearly a century, closed in the mid-80s.

Cohen has built four homes, two of them model homes, on "Stack Hill," and he's in the midst of building his first condominium structure, Copperline, on the flat waterfront area below "Stack Hill."

Construction of the three-story parking garage to serve that condo building is about 90 percent complete, and foundation is beginning on the multi-story residential structure, he said.

Plans for the development called Point Ruston include a commercial and retail center, a Silver Cloud hotel and more condominium structures.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has appointed Ada M. Healey to serve as a director of the Seattle branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

The news comes in a release today. According to the Fed, Healey is vice president of real estate for Vulcan, the Seattle-based corporation owned by Microsoft mogul Paul Allen.

Healey currently oversees the company's $1.8 billion development portfolio, and is portrayed by the Fed as being "instrumental in the redevelopment of nearly 60 acres the company owns" near Lake Union.

Healy has earned an undergraduate degree from Duke University and an MBA from New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

She joins other Seattle board members Helvi Sandvik, William Ayer, Richard Galanti, Stan McNaughton and Carol Nelson, respectively employed by NANA Development, Alaska Air Group, Costco, PEMCO and Cascade Financial.

A 300-foot-long float designed to attract more visiting yachts and tour boats to Tacoma is nearly ready for its debut.

The nearly $500,000 dock at South 16th Street along the Thea Foss Waterway's west side should be available by May 1.

The new float will create temporary moorage space for boaters visiting Tacoma for the day and for tour boats taking organized groups on cruises in Commencement Bay.

The dock's location at South 16th Street will make the dock convenient for convention groups staying downtown to walk from their hotels or the convention center to board their tour vessel, said Thea Foss Waterway Authority deputy director Su Dowie.

The new float is a short distance from the South 15th Street bridge over the BNSF railroad tracks that links downtown with the Foss Waterway area.

The dock, built with local government funds, will be charge visiting boaters a moorage fee based on the boat's length and how long it stays.

The total value of new residential building permits within Tacoma fell off a cliff in the first two months of 2009, new figures from the city reveal.

The value of residential building permits within the city totaled just $4.8 million during January and February 2009. That's just 17.8 percent of the $26.86 million in permit value in the first two months of 2008.

The total number of residential permits fell steeply but not as steeply as the combined value of those permits.

During January and February of this year, the city issued 95 residential building permits. That compares with 212 permits during the same period last year.

The story was much more encouraging on the commercial side where the value of permits issued so far this year was more than twice the value in the same period last year.

The city issued permits in January and February last year for commercial construction worth $16.06 million. The comparable figure for this year was $39.68 million.

The commercial permit activity was pumped up by two construction projects on the Tacoma Tideflats for new container-handling facilities.

That strong commercial showing raised total permit activity to $44.48 million compared with $42.93 million last year in January and February.

Click! wants to take you back to the days when Saturdays meant a day at the movies, and really at the movies, not on, say, cable TV.

The system has announced it will sponsor a monthly series of what it calls the "Click! Family Flick" in conjunction with Tacoma's Grand Cinema.

The movies – free – include “The Princess Bride” on March 21; “An American Tail,” April 18; “Babe,” May 16; “Back to the Future,” June 20; “Shrek,” July 18; and “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” August 15.

The shows start at 10:30 a.m., children under 14 must be accompanied by an adult and seating is first-come, first-served.

The program will be "a great way for families to experience a movie on the big screen at absolutely no charge," says Mitch Robinson, Click! marketing maestro.