SeaTac's Alaska Airlines has won first place among the nation's traditional air carriers in a J.D. Power & Associates satisfaction survey.

This is the second year in a row the airline won top honors.

In the low-cost carriers category, JetBlue Airways was at the top of the list.

According to the nationwide survey firm, the study measures overall passenger satisfaction in seven areas: cost and fees, flight crew, in-flight services, aircraft, boarding/deplaning/baggage, check-in and reservation.

Alaska performed particularly well in five of the seven areas, flight crew, aircraft, boarding/deplaning/baggage, check-in and reservation.

"Alaska airlines has made notable improvements in the courtesy and knowledge of its check-in staff from 2008," said Powers' Senior Director of Travel Practice Dale Haines.

A Bellingham hotel developer today formally unveiled a plan to build two hotels and an office building on a near-downtown Tacoma waterfront site.

Hollander Investments’ hotel construction plan could fulfill the Foss Waterway Development Authority’s long-held desire to bring guest lodging to the waterway.

The authority has struggled unsuccessfully for five years with two developers to get a hotel built on the formerly industrial inlet of Commencement Bay.

But while Hollander appears to have better access to money than prior developers and ample prior hotel construction and operational experience, much remains to be done before ground-breaking can happen. Hollander Investments built and operates downtown’s Courtyard by Marriott and two other hotels, both in Puyallup, in Pierce County.

Among the jobs that must be done are:
n Further development of specific plans for the three buildings.
n Approval of those designs by the authority’s design committee.
n Creation of revised development agreement satisfactory to both the authority and Hollander
n Sale of the property to Hollander by its present owner, Robert Thurston of Seattle. Thurston spent four years trying to develop hotel plans he could get financed. In the end, he failed.

The authority board Tuesday voted unanimously to begin the hard work of revising the existing development plan and set its Aug. 19 meeting to approve that plan.

Hollander, armed with that revised document, hopes to buy the property from Thurston by Sept. 1.

If he doesn’t have to seek new shoreline permits for the project, construction of the first hotel could be begin by January, he told the Foss board.

Under Hollander’s preliminary plan, the buildings would be constructed in phases, with one hotel being built first. The unbuilt half of the site would serve as a staging area for construction of the first nine-story hotel building. The hotel site is between the Esplanade condominiums and Thea’s Landing on Dock Street.

The second hotel would follow with the office structure being built last. Together, the three structures would form a u-shaped building with the open end of the u facing the waterway. Collectively, the three buildings would contain nearly 260,000 square feet of space. The two hotels would have about 250 rooms together.

Moving ahead on the second hotel and office building will likely depend on the health of the economy both nationally and locally, he said. The decision by Tacoma’s Russell Investments whether to stay in Tacoma or move to Seattle could play a large role in that decision, he said. Russell is expected to make that decision this fall.

Hollander’s initial plans call for one hotel becoming a Hilton, either a Garden Inn or the more modest Hampton Inn. The second would be a Marriott extended stay facility. The developer told the board he’s unsure which will come first. The answer will depend on what best fits the mix of hotel room existing or planned in Tacoma.

The hotelier’s plans for mid-range properties drew a caution from former Foss board member Frank Jacobs, himself a former developer and former head of the authority’s design review committee.
Jacobs reminded authority board members that the authority had envisioned a boutique hotel on the property, an smaller upscale establishment that would make best use of the rare waterfront site.

The authority shouldn’t rush in drawing up a new development agreement because it could regret its hasty decisions for up to 100 years, he said.

“We already made some mistakes once,” he said referring of the initial developer. “Let’s get it right this time.”

Kelly Kearsley wrote this story this afternoon:

By Kelly Kearsley
The News Tribune

A Federal Court in Tacoma temporarily shut down a telemarketing firm Monday following a lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission alleging that the company lied to consumers about helping to reduce their credit card debt and violated telemarketing sales rules.

MCS Programs – headquartered on Earnest S. Brazill Street in Tacoma – telemarketed “rapid debt reduction,” promising to negotiate lower credit card rates for consumers that would allow them to pay off their debt faster, according to the FTC.

The company – which operated nationwide and in Canada – charged between $690 and $899 for their services.

But the FTC alleges that in most cases consumers credit card rates remained the same.

“We have a lot of consumers complaining that the company did absolutely nothing for them – that they weren’t able to reduce their rates at all,” said Bob Schroeder, assistant regional director of the FTC’s Seattle office.

He wouldn’t say how many complaints the agency received, only that “there were a lot of unhappy customers” in the United States and Canada.

The FTC says that MCS Programs also broke telemarketing sales rules including calling people on the National Do Not Call Registry. The company did business under a few different names including Mutual Consolidated Savings, United Savings Center and USC Programs.

The court froze the company’s assets Monday and appointed a receiver to temporarily take control of the business. The receiver will review the company’s documents and operations and determine whether the business can be run in a way that’s legal, Shroeder said.

The FTC lawsuit names Paul Morris Thompson as the company’s owner, president and chief executive officer and Miranda Cavendar as its chief operating officer. The News Tribune was unable to reach Thompson or Cavendar Monday evening.

Seattle's daily and monthly parking rates are among the highest in the country according to a new parking survey by Collier International.

Colliers, a real estate service firm, lists downtown Seattle's median daily parking rates as $28.00 a day and $290.00 monthly.

The nation's highest rates are in Manhattan where midtown parking costs $44.00 a day or $550.00 monthly.

Others on the list:

Boston $34.00 and $402.50
San Francisco $25.00 and $350.00
Chicago $31.00 and $325.00
Los Angeles $28.20 and $205.00

The world's most expensive parking is in London, $1,020.00 monthly, Colliers said.

Tacoma and Olympia parking rates were not surveyed.

The state Attorney General's office, Secretary of State and Better Business Bureau are warning people not to be misled by two Pierce County businesses claiming to be charities.

Telemarketers from the organizations -- called Jobs for the Homeless and American Homeless and Disadvantage (sic) Workers - are contacting people and asking them to buy trash bags, light bulbs and gift cards at jacked up prices.

They say that the money spent on the items will go to help the homeless or support employment for people with disabilities, according to joint news release from state officials and the BBB.

But state records show that the two organizations are not registered as charities, meaning that "they can't suggest that the money they collect from the sales of their products will be used for any benevolent purpose," the news release says.

Consumers have filed complaints with the three agencies about the businesses. People who had agreed to give "donations" to groups in exchange for gift cards were instead mailed invoices saying they owed more money, according to the news release.

In some cases, people never received the products that they paid for.

Jobs for the Homeless is a sole proprietorship run by David B. Archibald with a mailing address in Tacoma and a physical address in Fife, according to the Department of Revenue Web site.

American Homeless and Disadvantage Workers is run by Biancco M. Gardner and uses the same mailing address as Jobs for the Homeless.

Gardner told the Secretary of State's office that he plans to register as a charity, the news release states.

Before you donate money to a charity:

-- Make sure the charity is legitimate. You can do this by checking with Web sites and consumer agencies including the Secretary of State's Web site and the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance at www.give.org.

-- Give to organizations that you are familiar with and trust.
-- Ask exactly how your money will be used.
-- Pay by check and protect your personal information.
-- Keep records of your contributions.

If you believe you are the victim of a charity fraud, call the Attorney General's office between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. at 1-800-551-4636 or file a complaint online.

Pierce County office vacancies rose 1.28 percent in the second quarter as companies consolidated office quarters and others awaited positive signs from the economy before expanding, a new survey says.

That survey by Colliers International said Pierce County marketplace vacancies hit 11.90 percent in the last three months.

Part of Pierce County's increase in vacant office space came from two additions to the inventory, Tacoma's Old City Hall and the South Hill Business and Technology Center.

Old City Hall had once been scheduled for conversion to condominiums, but the owner was unable convince two office tenants with longterm favorable leases to vacate early. The building's vacant spaces are now back on the market as offices.

On South Hill, Benaroya Companies of Seattle is converting a former microchip plant into the South Hill Business and Technology Center. Former electronics production buildings will be converted to office space, adding to the unleased inventory.

More Class A office space is coming on line laters this summer in Tacoma with the opening of Pacific Plaza, the former Park Plaza South parking garage. The garage has been updated and several floors of office space have been added atop the structure.

The biggest customer for Boeing's new generation 747, the 747-8, says it expects that flight test delays on Boeing's 787 Dreamliner will spill over into the 747-8 program.

German carrier Lufthansa, which has ordered 20 of the four-engine 747s, says it won't cancel or defer its planned purchase because of those delays.

"I'm sure the delay of the 787 will mean that they have pull in more engineering resources, and that will (mean) even further delays, as a consequence for the 747-8," said Lufthansa chief financial officer Stephan Gemkow. "I would not be surprised to learn this some weeks and months in the future." Gemkow spoke at an investor conference last week.

The 747-8's schedule has already been adversely affected by the laggard Dreamliner because Boeing pulled engineering talent from the larger plane project to help remedy problems with the Dreamliner.

The Dreamliner's first flight was postponed again last week by last minute issues with the strength of the wing-body joints.

Boeing has said it will announce a new schedule for that flight in a few weeks. The Dreamliner is already nearly two years behind.

After months of bruising fare wars, domestic airlines appear to be halting their skirmishes and reversing the fare reductions.

For the second time in two weeks, major domestic carriers, this time led by American Airlines, have initiated fare hikes ranging from $10 to $20 roundtrip on many U.S. routes, said Rick Seaney, chief executive of farecompare.com.

Seaney warned consumers that these small price hikes could the beginning of the end of big bargain air fares this summer.

"I have been cautioning consumers for the past month that they procrastinate on purchasing airline tickets at their own risk -- two air fare hikes in the past few weeks is the strongest signal I have seen that the bottom is either here or near," he said.

Kent Station, downtown Kent's urban shopping center, has announced two new tenants will soon join the mix of restaurants, office users and retailers at the development across from the King County Regional Justice Center.

With the completion of a new four-story office and retail structure at Kent Station, the first tenants are starting to move in. Those tenants are led by Green River Community College with 43,000 square feet of classroom space to augment the college's existing Kent Station classrooms.

New tenants for the structure include the Social Security Administration, which is leasing 14,200 square feet on the building's fourth floor.

On the structure's ground level, Kaiten Sushi will open in a 3,500-square-foot space in September. The restaurant's sushi dishes will be delivered on a conveyor belt which will snake through the restaurant.

Orders for commercial aircraft may be in the tank at Boeing this year, but the Navy has come through with a new order this week that should help sustain employment at Boeing's Renton plant.

The Navy this week added nine aircraft to its previous order for 114 P-8A naval patrol planes.

The sub hunting aircraft is made in Renton on a new assembly line adjacent to the existing 737 assembly line.

The P-8A Poseidon is a militarized version of the twin jet 737 equipped with sensors to detect submarines and with weaponry to kill them.

The Poseidon will replace the Navy's P-3C. The P-3C is a military version of Lockheed's turboprop Electra airliner.

More than 1,000 job seekers, resumes in hand, went job hunting Wednesday at the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall.

The occasion was the Northwest Job Expo in its 8th annual version.

Those hiring ranged from DaVita Inc. to Emerald Queen Casino. Organizers said the number of exhibitors this year was less than half of the 70 that attended last year's expo. Missing were government agencies which had neither the budget to open a booth nor jobs to offer.

For Starbucks' fans, here's a bit of good news to counter the bad that has befallen the Seattle-based coffee retailer recently.

Starbucks' Pike Place Blend coffee recently won unanimous praise from a panel of "java junkies" in a St. Petersburg Times blind taste test.

The Starbucks blend was named "best hot coffee," surpassing McDonald's, Dunkin Donuts' and 7-Eleven's.

Starbuck's iced mochas came in second behind McDonald's.

Pierce County's office vacancy rate increased from 11.90 percent in the second quarter from 10.62 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to a report released today from Colliers International.

The report credits the troubled economy with the increase in available office space. Multiple companies have departed, according to the report, and the vacant space at Tacoma's Old City Hall was added back into the inventory.

The office vacancy rate in the second quarter of last year was 11.10 percent.

Meanwhile, the vacancy rate for industrial real estate in the county dipped ever so slightly to 9.14 percent in the second quarter from 9.3 percent in the first quarter.

This was due to completed lease transactions and a few new owners moving into their buildings including O'Reilly Automotive and plastics company Saint-Gobian in Puyallup, Colliers reports.

Bearish traders are buying Costco "put" options in unusual volumes this week, betting that the Issaquah-based membership retailer's stock will fall further this year.

Put options increase in value if the selling price of the stock declines.

According to Barrons.com, Costco usually trades about 9,000 puts and calls a day. But that volume rose to almost 40,000 Monday including 15,000 October 45 put options.

Costco has reported declining year-over-year sales in recent months, although some of that decline was attributable to currency valuation changes and the relative bargain prices of gasoline compared to this time last year.

Costco stock closed today at $45.04 a share, down three cents from Tuesday. That price is closer to the 52-week low of $38.17 than it is to the 52-week high of $74.89.

In a move that could affect the number of cruise ship passengers departing from Puget Sound on Alaska cruises, the cruise industry says it plans a legal challenge of the Alaska cruise tax.

Micky Arison, chief executive of Carnival Corp., the world's largest cruise line, this week told reporters that the industry will take the 49th State to court over the $50 per passenger tax.

The cruise industry claims that tax is cutting into its Alaska cruise business. Seattle is now the main home port for Alaska cruises, taking the place long held by Vancouver, B.C.

Cruise lines have cut their Alaska capacity for next summer in part because of falling traffic on Alaska cruises.

Alaskans approved the tax in 2006. The cruise industry has lobbied the Alaska Legislature for two years in a fruitless attempt to get the tax repealed.

Cruise lines contend eliminating the tax will reinvigorate the business, attracting more tourist to visit Alaska by ship.

Transportation and logistics company American Fast Freight plans to start construction soon on its new 90,000-square facility in Fife.

The company -- now located in Tacoma's Tideflats -- ships cargo to Alaska, Hawaii, Guam and Puerto Rico.

American Fast Freight currently leases property from the Port of Tacoma and is moving to make way for the port's planned expansion onto the Blair-Hylebos Peninsula.

The new building will house the company's northwest sales group, administration and customer service departments and will feature a cold storage facility and 100 shipping and receiving doors, according to a news release from the company.

The company recently obtained its construction permits and expects to begin construction on the facility -- at 7400 45th St. Ct. E. -- immediately. The building will be finished by the end of this year or early next.

Airbus today delivered its first made-in-China aircraft from a factory in Tianjin.

The European aircraft maker and Boeing rival plans to build four A320 aircraft a month at the factory by 2011.

The rollout comes at a delicate time for Airbus when worldwide orders have slowed to a near halt and airlines worldwide are postponing and canceling deliveries.

Airbus isn't the first foreign planemaker to assemble planes in China. Brazil's Embraer now assembles commuter jets in a Chinese factory, and McDonell Douglas once built MD-80 aircraft in a Chinese factory.

The idea of a Chinese factory is two-fold: less expensive labor and a home country advantage in sales.

China is becoming the world's largest market for airliners as its population becomes more affluent.

But prior tries at building airliners in China proved problematic with uneven quality and production snafus

Delta Air Lines has moved its ticketing to the former Northwest airlines counters in the center of the ticket lobby at Sea-Tac Airport.

The airline, which merged with Northwest last year, also has moved its flights from the A Concourse to Sea-Tac's South Satellite, the airport announced today.

The moves complete the integration of Northwest's activities into Delta's at Sea-Tac. All of the Northwest Airlines logos have been removed and replaced with Delta's as part of that consolidation.

Baggage for Delta flights will arrive on the airport's carousels 3, 4 and 5.

The parent company of retailers TJ Maxx and Marshall's agreed today to pay $9.75 million in a settlement with multiple states, including Washington, regarding a data breach that exposed the credit card information of thousands of shoppers.

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna said $2.5 million of the settlement will fund a Data Security Trust Fund to be used by the states to advance enforcement efforts and policy development in the field of data security.

“Safeguarding personal information isn’t just good business, it’s crucial for our economy,” McKenna said.

Data leaks can cost a company millions of dollars and damage their reputation, McKenna said.

McKenna added that money from the settlement will supplement state efforts to enforce smart business practices and to educate businesses and consumers about how to protect personal information.

In January 2007 TJX Companies announced a data breach that exposed at least 45.7 million credit and debit cards to possible fraud in the computer systems.

The breach began in July 2005, but wasn't detected until December 2006.

Under the settlement with the multi-state group of 41 Attorneys General, TJX must also certify that its computer system meets detailed data security requirements specified by the states and must encourage the development of new technologies to address weaknesses in the U.S. payment card system.

Filling a gap that American Airlines is leaving by abandoning its San Jose, Calif.-Austin, Texas flights, Alaska Airlines announced new service between the tech-oriented cities.

The flights will continue on to Portland on the same plane.

The new daily flights begin Sept. 2, said the SeaTac-based airline.

The airline earlier this year announced new flights from Seattle to the Texas capital beginning Aug. 3. American had abandoned that route in a route downsizing earlier this year.

The first flight of Boeing's oft-delayed 787 Dreamliner, until today scheduled to happen by the end of June, was postponed indefinitely this morning.

Boeing said it needs to strengthen the area where the plane's wings join its composite body.

The proposed modification will involve a "small number of parts," said Scott Fancher, head of the 787 program. The modifications can be installed without removing the wings and won't add significant weight or aerodynamic drag to the plane.

The problems involve several areas a few inches long, he said. The parts needed to fix the problem can be held in a person's hand, said Fancher. A total of 36 locations are involved on both sides of the aircraft.

The parts involved in the modification will be made in Boeing's fabrication division, likely in Auburn. The parts are metal, either titanium or aluminum.

This morning's delay announcement is the latest in a string of delays that have moved the Dreamliner's first flight nearly two years beyond its original schedule of late summer 2007.

Scott Carson, president of Boeing's Commercial Airplanes division, said the company needs time -- likely several weeks -- to design modifications to the wing-body junction, install them and to reschedule the first flight.

The potential weakness was discovered in static strength testing of another example of the Dreamliner.

Boeing's computer model of the plane failed to accurately predict the strain and stress on the areas that need to be modified.

Strain gauges on the static test plane disclosed those flaws, Fancher said, and visual inspection confirmed what the gauges were showing.

The strength issues were discovered a few weeks ago. Further study showed that the initial test plane could fly but the flight test would have to be extremely limited without the modifications.

The areas being modified involved structures built by Japan's Mitsubishi and Fuji and designed by Boeing and those two Japanese partners.

The plane's "wing box," the area where the wing attaches to the fuselage, had been previously strengthened after early testing uncovered weakness in the original design.

The Dreamliner is a revolutionary aircraft, the first large passenger jet designed largely of composite materials.

The plane has been plagued with production and design issues since its start. Although the aircraft made its public debut on July 8, 2007 at Everett, the plane has undergone a handful of delays as workers at Everett completed work not done by Boeing partners, installed or replaced missing or defective fasteners and modified its structure.

The modifications are likely to delay the whole series of six test and early production aircraft.

Boeing's began notifying its 56 787 customers of the delay Monday night. Not all had been notified by the time Boeing held a press conference early this morning.

The flight test delay is likely to domino through the production delivery schedule causing the first production planes to be delayed. The first production aircraft was to be delivered to launch customer All Nippon Airways in the first quarter of next year.

Carson said how long those delivery delays will be is still unknown.

While the parts are being designed, built and tested, gauntlet and taxi testing will continue for the first two test aircraft, said Boeing.

The stock market punished Boeing for the delay with a nearly 8 percent drop in its stock price this morning. At 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time, Boeing was selling at $43.28 a share, down $3.67 from Monday's close.

Boeing Co. today declared a dividend of 42 cents a share.

That dividend is payable Sept. 4 to shareholders of record as of August 7.

The dividend is 2 cents a share more than in the comparable period last year.

Boeing stock closed today at $46.90 a share, down $1.54 from Friday's close.

Employees of Tacoma's Russell Investments were asked in a survey in recent months about their thoughts about where the new headquarters should be located.

We understand the results are now in. But we don't know how the workforce voted.

Will it be Tacoma or move to Seattle?

We'd love to hear from anyone who voted who'll say why they voted for one city or the other. We won't use your name in any subsequent story if you want it kept confidential.

Send your reply or your comments to: John Gillie, The News Tribune, PO Box 11000, Tacoma, WA 98411 or via e-mail to john.gillie@thenewstribune.com

Olympia and Tacoma are among just 33 urban areas where housing starts were up in the 3-month period ending in April this year.

Data from Moody'sEconomy.com shows that new housing starts in Olympia rose 77 percent over the same February through April period in 2008. In Tacoma, the increase was 32 percent. Moody's compiled statistics from 381 urban areas around the nation.

Vallejo, Calif. led the nation in the increase in housing starts with a 440 percent jump.

The increases in a few communities nationwide may be the first glimmers of a revival of the housing industry that has seen its business diminished dramatically in the ongoing recession.

Consumer prices in the West, including the Puget Sound area, inched up again last month. The increase. .3 percent, was fueled mostly by rising gas prices.

The increase was identical to the .3 percent increase in April, said the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Still the Consumer Price Index remained 1.1 percent lower in May 2009 than a year ago.

The dramatic drop in fuel prices and falling and then stagnant home prices led to the first decline this year in the CPI since 1950.

In Tacoma, seasonal gasoline prices continued to rise this month with average prices for a gallon of regular at $2.891 today according to TacomaGasPrices.com.

A month ago, the average gasoline prices were $2.561 here, while a year ago, they hit $4.333.

The new increases for cost-of-living in the West brought the CPI in the region to 218.567. That means that a market basket of goods and services you could have bought in the 1982-84 base period for $100 now would have cost $218.57 in May.

Virgin Atlantic Airways has ordered 10 Airbus A330-300 aircraft, six directly from Boeing rival Airbus and four from a leasing company, to fill a capacity gap left by the late delivery of Boeing 787 Dreamliners.

The order, worth some $2.1 billion at list prices, will help Virgin Atlantic, owned in part by Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Group and by Singapore Airlines, fly routes that had been scheduled for Boeing 787s.

The 787, the first of which is due to fly in the next week, is now nearly two years behind schedule in its first deliveries.

The A330s, twin-engine planes about the same size as the 787s, will be delivered beginning in 2011. The first of Virgin's 787s are set for delivery beginning in 2013.

The stillborn Foss Waterway hotel project could be getting new life soon from an experienced Tacoma hotel developer.

Hollander Properties LLC is strongly considering buying the hotel site on the west side of the near-downtown Thea Foss Waterway at South 15th Street.

Hollander is the owner of downtown Tacoma's newest hotel, the Marriott Courtyard Tacoma.

Hollander partner Mark Hollander this week told the Foss Waterway Development Authority the investment company's preliminary plans call for construction of a 200-room Marriott or Hilton hotel on the waterfront site.

He asked the development authority to begin the process of assigning the site's development agreement to his company. That development agreement sets the rules and deadlines for redevelopment of the site. The authority has scheduled a special meeting June 30 to consider the request.

If Hollander acquires the site between the Esplanade condominium project and the Foss Landing condominiums, it will be the third developer to take swing at making the hotel project happen.

The site's first hotel development company dropped out soon after the waterway authority picked a winner in a contest to earn the development rights to the site.

Seattle hotelier Robert Thurston then assumed the responsibility and worked for four years trying to find a building design that would be both profitable and financible.

Thurston's designs ranged from a boutique hotel project to various mixes of hotel rooms, luxury condos and retail spaces.

In the end, the recession killed Thurston's opportunity for financing, and he put the site on the market earlier this year.

Don Meyer, the waterway authority's director, said having Hollander as a developer for the site potentially is a "huge plus for the waterway."

Hollander owns five hotels in the Puget Sound region including a Best Western in Puyallup.

Bellingham-based Hollander has first-hand experience in the Tacoma market with its Marriott across the street from the Tacoma Convention and Trade Center. That hotel is less than three blocks from the Foss hotel site.

Meyer said the authority may rewrite the development agreement to ensure that whatever is built on the site conforms to the authority's updated standards. The authority may remove the requirements in the present development agreement to include retail uses in the project.

The waterway area is awash in vacant retail spaces built as part of earlier projects.

Hollander said he doesn't want to make promises yet about what could happen on the site and even whether his family's company will acquire it.

"This is a nice site with great potential, but it's an extremely complicated deal with the permits needed, the economic situation and the potential neighbor issues," he said.

"We're a very successful company, but a very cautious too," Hollander said.

John Gillie: 253-597-8663
john.gillie@thenewstribune.com

Boeing says it wasn't playing the orders game at this year's Paris Air Show, but even so, the final tally of results had to be painful for Boeing to view.

Boeing won just three commercial airplane orders last week during the air show, two from a Japanese aircraft leasing company, and one from an unnamed private customer who ordered an executive jet version of the 737.

In the meanwhile, Europe's Airbus chalked up 58 orders at its count including a 24-aircraft order from Qatar Airways, a 16-plane order for A321s from Vietnam Airlines, and a 10-plane order from Air Asia X for A350XEB-900s.

The new orders give Boeing a net order total for 2009 of 10 aircraft. Net orders are computed by taking the total number of orders for the year so far and subtracting the cancellations. Boeing has booked 61 new aircraft orders this year and 51 cancellations. Forty-five of those cancellations were for the much-delayed 787 Dreamliner.

Alaska Airlines today amped up the competition with Las Vegas-based discount carrier Allegiant Air.

Alaska, based in SeaTac, added a fourth weekly flight to its schedule from Bellingham to Las Vegas.

Three-times weekly service to Las Vegas from Bellingham to Las Vegas is scheduled to begin Thursday. The fourth weekly flight will commence on Aug. 3.

Allegiant has become successful in linking mid-sized communities such as Bellingham directly to Las Vegas and other vacation destinations often on a less-than-daily basis.

Allegiant now connects Bellingham with Las Vegas, Phoenix, Palm Springs, Calif., Los Angeles, San Diego and Oakland.

Alaska's regional sister airline, Horizon Air, provides service from Bellingham to Sea-Tac Airport for connections to Alaska flights.

Allegiant's non-stop service from Bellingham has cut into Horizon's business from the northern Washington city.

With the fourth weekly flight, Alaska will connect Bellingham to Las Vegas on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays.

Not surprisingly, hotel occupancy in all regions of the state was down in April, with Bellevue hotels and motels seeing the greatest decline and Spokane and Eastern Washington marking the smallest.

In Tacoma and Pierce County, the occupancy rate was down 8.5 percent from April 2008. This year, only 62.3 percent of area rooms were occupied, against 68.1 percent the year before. In Bellevue, the rate was down 20.3 percent, and in Spokane, 5.9 percent. Statewide, the occupancy rate fell 9.7 percent, according to Bellevue hospitality consultant Wolfgang Rood.

The average daily room rate rose in three areas in April – in Pierce County, Southwest Washington and in the Tri-Cities and Central Washington. The Southwest Washington rate, $71.87, was up 0.7 percent, while the Tacoma rate, $79.87, was up from $78.35 the year before. The statewide rate, $119.28, was down 5.3 percent. Everett saw the greatest dip, down 17.7 percent to $55.59.

In Oregon, the statewide occupancy rate was down 8.9 percent – with 63.5 percent of rooms occupied in April. The statewide average price of a room, $91.96, was down 8.9 percent, Rood said in his monthly report.

Passenger traffic at Sea-Tac Airport was off 133,134 passengers in May from the same month last year, new figures from the airport show.

That decrease amounts to a 4.74 percent dip from the May 2008 figures.

Through the end of May, 688,927 fewer passengers have used the airport than in the first five months of 2008, Sea-Tac statistics revealed. That's a 5.51 percent decline.

Particularly hard hit by recession-caused travel strictures was international travel to Sea-Tac.

The airport reported 12.11 percent fewer incoming international passengers in May and 13.45 percent fewer this year until the end of May.

Boeing this week began production of the first of hundreds of 787 Dreamliner jetliners airlines have ordered from the company.

The company has built or is still building six test aircraft, but the jetliner begun this week is the first that will be delivered to a customer after it rolls off the assembly line.

The twin-engine jet is destined for All Nippon Airways, the launch customer of the revolutionary jet.

Boeing expects to deliver the jet from its Everett assembly line in the first quarter of next yaar.

All Nippon has ordered 50 of the composite jetliners from Boeing.

Before the All Nippon plane can be delivered, the company must successfully complete test flights of its test fleet of 787s.

The first of those aircraft is set to fly before the end of the month, nearly two years behind the original schedule.

Boeing has orders for 865 Dreamliners from 56 airlines.

The News Tribune today announced week-long unpaid furloughs for its workforce.

The furloughs are part of an expense-reduction plan drawn up early this year to cope with the recession-related advertising revenue shortfalls at the Tacoma paper, said News Tribune Publisher David Zeeck.

Employees will schedule the unpaid time off during this year’s second half.

Looks like the “Urban Garage Sale” at Ledger Square last Saturday was such a success – they’re doing it all again.

Last Saturday the organizers raised $6,400. This Saturday they’ll go from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. (at the confluence of St. Helens and Market Street near the Municipal Building downtown) and they hope to raise that much or more.

All proceeds go toward finishing a 6-foot-by-28-foot tile mural that depicts a bygone day at the site The News Tribune called home for several decades.

Blaine Johnson, Tacoma developer and president of the Theater District Association, said this week he hopes to raise $30,00 for the ceramic-panoramic-photographic mural showing a crowd that gathered on Oct. 10, 1926 to view real-time results of a World Series game between the New York Yankees (who lost) and the St. Louis Cardinals.

Among the items up for sale this weekend are old costume jewelry, artwork and household items. A French jazz pianist is offering lessons and a two-hour recital, and Tacoma architect Lynne Martin offers two hours of professional consultation. Expect gift certificates, collectibles, tickets to the Grand Cinema and Tacoma Symphony, glass, plants, clothes, ephemera and more.

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport rose to 17th among United States airports in passenger traffic last year according to a new report by Airports Council International.

The airport handled 32,196,528 passengers last year, a 2.9 percent increase over 2007, according to the Geneva-based airport organization.

The airport had been the 18th largest U.S. Airport in 2007 with 31,296,628 passengers.

Sea-Tac moved up a spot as Philadelphia moved into 18th place.

At the top of the list was Atlanta with 90,039,280 passengers followed by Chicago's O'Hare Airport with 69,353,876 passengers.

Completing the top five were Los Angeles, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver.

Seattle's passenger traffic exceeded that of Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C.'s Dulles Airport, New York LaGuardia, Baltimore, Honolulu and Salt Lake City, to name a few.

Tacoma's Click! Cable TV is offering free workshops for its customers on how to use its video-on-demand system.

The workshop entitled "Cable 101: Even More Ins and Outs of Video-on-Demand" is set for Tuesday at 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. in the Public Utilities Auditorium, 3628 South 35th St.

"There are thousands of hours of free programs available to most cable customers," said Click! Network marketing manager Mitch Robinson. "Unfortunately, some people don't know how to find them."

Besides the free on-demand programming from the History Channel, National Geographic and PBS, Click! also offers extra cost shows on-demand.

Reservations are required for the workshops. Those reservations are available by calling 253-502-8900.

The wires and the Internet are alive with hints that Boeing could soon announce a location for a second 787 Dreamliner assembly line -- and it won't be in the Puget Sound area.

All of the reports we've heard involve a fair amount of reading between the lines and extrapolation from what Boeing is saying officially.

Here's how the logic goes:

Boeing is nearly two years behind with its 787 Dreamliner program. Its orderbook for the Dreamliner, despite a few defections, still is more than 850 aircraft.

If Boeing is going to make up any ground in filling its orders, it will have to fairly quickly ramp up its assembly process. Only now is the first "production" 787 entering the far end of the assembly line in Everett behind the six test aircraft.

The notion that Boeing will be able to carry through with its original goal of just bolting together a Dreamliner in three days at its Everett plant from big preassembled sections is still a fantasy.

Boeing now says its major partners are performing better work on those subassemblies, but Boeing may find itself doing more work at the assembly plant than it had hoped. Translation: don't expect the parts to enter the back door on Monday and emerge as a whole airliner on Thursday morning.

Thus the need for a second assembly line.

=> Read more!

With the Paris Airshow concluding its third day today, Boeing finally tallied an order.

The order for two 737-800 single-aisle jets comes from MC Aviation Partners, a leasing company owned by Japanese industrial giant Mitsubishi Corp.

The two 737-800s are valued at $153 million at list prices. Boeing customers often negotiate discounts from those prices especially when sales are slow as they are now.

The two aircraft will be leased to Skymark Airlines of Japan.

The first orders for Boeing came after its rival, Airbus, had announced orders from several Mideast and Asian airlines.

While Airbus is far outdistancing Boeing in the airshow order race, neither is doing well by standards of previous years when hundreds of orders were announced.

The Tacoma area's unemployment rate stabilized at 10.1 percent in May, the same rate as the revised figures for April for the Tacoma area.

But the Tacoma figure, released today by the Washington State Employment Security Department along with other rates statewide, remains greater than the state average.

The state's ueemployment percentage, 9.4 percent, inched upward from the 9 percent recorded in April on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Neighboring Thurston and King counties were more fortunate with identical 8 percent unemployment rates.

Snohomish County recorded a 9.5 percent rate.

The labor force lost 6,700 non-farm jobs in May statewide, the department said.

Expect dips and peaks in the rate for the next several months, said Greg Weeks, chief of the state's labor market information office.

"The economic numbers are volatile right now," he said, "and at times contradictory."

"The recession has been deep and wide, and we're likely to see ups and downs for awhile," he said.

About 327,430 people are unemployed in the state. Of those, 215,218 are receiving unemployment compensation checks.

Washington Sen. Patty Murray today voiced her concern over European governments' plans to offer Boeing rival Airbus low-cost loans to develop a new jetliner.

The European planemaker is seeking up to $5 billion in loans to help pay the estimated $11 billion cost of developing the Airbus A350XWB.

The A350XWB is designed to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and its 777.

"I am deeply troubled that Airbus is considering pursuing additional illegal, trade-distorting subsidies that have caused adverse effect on the United States aerospace industry," said wrote in a letter to John Bruxton, head of the Delegation of the European Commission to the United States.

"Launch aid for the A350, or any other preferential financing for Airbus is completely unacceptable," she wrote. "We will not tolerate another round of subsidies that kill American jobs."

Airbus claims Boeing likewise receives governmental subsidies in the form of aeronautical research contracts from the federal government and from foreign governments who subsidize Boeing's industrial partners in their countries.

Airbus says it has repayed prior governmental loans with interest from the sale of aircraft.

But some analysts recently have raised the possibility that that streak of repayments could end with the superjumbo A380.

Sales of the huge aircraft have halted with the recession at fewer than 200, and some airlines are having second thoughts about deploying a plane with so much capacity on now-weak routes.

Airbus has said it will have to sell about 400 of the 550-passenger planes to recoup its investment.

Coast Engine and Equipment Co., the Tacoma Tideflats railroad equipment repair company, has postponed its closure a month until July 31.

Dave Swanson, CEECO president, said finishing up commitments to several customers will take that long to complete.

That means extended employment for the six dozen workers CEECO has on its payroll.

CEECO had originally scheduled its final day for July 3.

The drop in demand in the railroad industry has had a major effect on locomotive repair and overhaul companies such as CEECO. Railroads that formerly were repairing their motive power now just draw from the pool of mothballed locomotives.

Railroads have sidelined hundreds of locomotives as demand has slackened with the recession.

The sign on the door said it all. Tacoma’s Black Water Cafe closed on Monday.

No reasons given, no long sentimental goodbyes offered. Just that: Closed.

The popular downtown coffee purveyor, located at 743 St. Helens Ave., now leaves a void. Where will people go to satisfy their needs - assuming those needs include a good cup of coffee from an independent store and a good place to sit and listen to the music of the spheres.

What’s left? Satellite Coffee on Division, Valhalla Coffee on Sixth Avenue, Mandolin Cafe also on South 12th, and Commencement Bay Coffee on Jefferson all come to mind.

So what’s your favorite? Do you have a personal caffeine nest somewhere in Tacoma? Maybe it’s Tully’s or Starbucks. Maybe it’s an actual cafe, somewhere that’s been serving joe since before a cup of same cost more than a turkey dinner at Woolworth’s.

Let the discussion begin. Who takes the place of Black Water?

One of Tacoma's largest developers has signed an extended labor harmony agreement with 16 unions and the Pierce County Building and Construction Trades Council.

The agreement with Point Ruston LLC, which is building billion dollar mixed-use office, retail and residential development at the site of the old Asarco smelter near Point Defiance Park, ensures that at least half the labor used in the project will be union, said Loren Cohen, a spokesman for the development company.

The news release announcing the expansion of a similar agreement signed last December, is the latest salvo in a fight between Point Ruston developer Mike Cohen and the activist group Jobs with Justice.

Jobs with Justice has accused Cohen's construction activity of stirring up arsenic-polluted dust from the smelter site through careless construction practices by some of his contractors.

Indeed, Cohen dismissed one non-union contractor from the job after the state discovered its workers lacked training about working on the site.

The former Asarco smelter used high-arsenic ore as the raw material from which it extracted copper and other metals and from which it captured arsenic for use in industrial chemicals and poisons.

The smelter site has been the subject of intensive federal scrutiny in an effort to cleanup the brownfield location and make it suitable again for habitation.

Cohen contends he is following all Environmental Protection Agency guidelines. The EPA and Asarco have spent more than $100 million cleaning up and trapping polutants from the old smelter.

Point Ruston earlier this year sued Jobs with Justice and the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters alleged they had harassed the company and interfered with its development activities.

Jobs with Justice named Cohen its 2008 "Grinch of the Year."

The labor harmony agreement, however, elicited a mostly laudatory comment from Jobs with Justice.

"Jobs with Justice celebrates this tremendous progress for construction workers and the right to organize unions at Point Ruston. We hope this progress will continue on the principle that workers can afford some of the homes they build as well as justice for future and past Point Ruston workers," said Mo Hoyt, Jobs with Justice Pierce County Organizing Committee chair.

Jobs with Justice has called on Cohen to include affordable housing in the waterfront view development.

Sea-Tac Airport's third runway, whose construction was delayed for years by legal challenges, is back in court again.

Two Burien and one City of SeaTac resident have sued the airport's owner, the Port of Seattle, contending the new runway's airline traffic is diminishing the value of their homes and those of dozens of other residents near the airport.

The three are asking King County Superior Court to make their suit a class action on behalf of all of those Sea-Tac neighbors affected by the aircraft noise.

The three contend that third runway usage far exceeds what the port projected when it proposed the runway 15 years ago.

The Port of Seattle didn't immediately return calls asking for comment.

The traffic on the 8,500-foot-long runway is higher than anticipated in part because the port shut down the airport's longest runway earlier this spring.

The port is replacing that long runway for the first time since it was built in 1943. That runway is expected to be open again this fall.

The three residents claim the port misled them into believing that the new runway would only be used when the weather was causing delays on the other runways.

In addition to monetary damages, the suit asks the court to prohibit planes from flying over their homes at less than 1,500 feet and from entering the airspace over their homes more than once an hour. The suit seeks a curfew between 10 p.m. and 9 a.m. weekdays and from 10 p.m. Fridays until 9 a.m. Mondays.

The second of six test Boeing 787 Dreamliners has moved out of the assembly hall and onto the flight line at Paine Field in Everett.

The aircraft, painted in the colors of launch customer All Nippon Airways, will begin fuel testing today.

The first test Dreamliner is expected to make its first flight sometime later this month.

The second Dreamliner test plane will be used for system tests, said Boeing.

Japan Airlines late last week dropped its orders for the shortest range Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the 787-3, in favor of the longer-range 787-8.

That move means Japan's All Nippon Airways is the sole customer for the shorter-range, higher capacity version of the high-tech Dreamliner.

ANA has 28 orders for the 787-3. It has converted two orders from the 787-3 to the 787-8.

The 787-3 is a plane that Boeing is building mostly for shorter-range routes primarily within Asia. The 787-3 won't have the raked wingtips of the 787-8 and 787-9 to allow the -3 greater access to narrow gates at some Asian airports.

The 787-3's range is between 2,875 and 3,550 statute miles. The 787-8's range will be up to 9,775 miles if Boeing is successful in reducing the overweight condition of the first airplanes.

=> Read more!

One of the reasons the Air Force picked the Airbus A330-based aerial tanker over Boeing's modified 767 in the last round of competition was the A330's size.

The twin-engine Airbus passenger jet modified with the help of NOrthrop Grumman could carry more fuel, cargo or troops than Boeing's small 767.

Now that Boeing and Airbus get to recompete that $40 billion contract because the Air Force was caught with its thumb on the scale during the last competition, Boeing says it will counter the A330 with its 777.

"You want big? We'll give you big," said Boeing in effect to the Air Force today in Paris.

Boeing Integrated Defense Systems President Jim Albaugh told journalists that Boeing will offer both the 767 and the 777 in the aerial tanker competition beginning this summer, reported Bloomberg News.

Analysts wonder whether the 777, which is bigger than the Airbus A330, is just too much of a good thing.

Boeing argued during the last competition that the A330's size wasn't necessarily an advantage because it would require larger ground facilities and would carry more fuel than would be needed on typical refueling missions.

The A330 tanker could carry 250,000 pounds of fuel versus the 767's 202,000 pounds.

Some rumors suggest too that Boeing could offer the largest version of the 767, the 767-400, as a way of addressing the capacity gap, but there's been no confirmation from the company.

With June halfway done, Boeing's got a little more than two weeks to make good on its most recent promise to fly the 787 Dreamliner before the end of the quarter.

Based on news from the Paris Air Show, Boeing could be launching the Dreamliner at the last possible moment.

First, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Scott Carson told reporters in Paris that the Dreamliner won't be flying during the airshow. Scratch this week for the first flight.

And then rumors emerged that the first time the 787 will leave the ground has tentatively been set for June 30.

That's what blogger Jon Ostrower says he's hearing. Ostrower has pretty reliable sources inside the 787 organization.

The plane, nearly two years late already in getting off the ground, has passed the so-called "intermediate gauntlet" testing in which Boeing simulated actual flights while the plane remained on the ground.

Now it faces more tests leading up to low and high speed taxi testing before it leaves the earth from Paine Field in Everett and pulls its wheels up for a two to three-hour initial test flight around the Puget Sound area.

American Airlines has placed orders for eight more Boeing 737-800 jetliners worth some $600 million at list prices.

The order moves Boeing's order tally into positive territory for the year. The company now has seen 73 new orders for aircraft and 66 cancellations.

One unidentified buyer canceled an order for a 787 Dreamliner last week.

American is gradually replacing its fuel-guzzling mainline jet, the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 with 737-800s, the mid-sized version of its popular single-aisle twin-jet.

American expects to take delivery of 31 737s this year and 45 in 2010. It has orders for eight more 737s in 2011. The 737 is built at Boeing's Renton plant.

Washington State will receive $2.6 million as part of a nationwide settlement with a drug manufacturer that allegedly overcharged government healthcare programs prescription medications.

Attorney General Rob McKenna said Aventis Pharmaceutical Inc. has agreed to a $95.5 million nationwide settlement for allegedly overcharging for three steroid anti-inflammatory nasal sprays.

Those drugs were Azmacort, Nasacort and Nasacort AQ.

This is how the overcharge happened, according to the attorney general's office:

"Under the Medicaid Drug Rebate Statute, Aventis was required to report the lowest or 'best' price price that it charged commercial customers and pay quarterly rebates to Medicaid based on those reported prices. Washington's settlement resolves allegations that between 1995 and 2000, Aventis and its corporate predecessors knowingly misreported the information in order to make more money on the nasal sprays."

The attorney general said that the drugmaker sold the three products to Kaiser Permanente, a large health maintenance organization (owner of Group Health). It allowed Kaiser to repackage those drugs under Kaiser's private label, thus dodging the price comparisons with what the government was paying.

Kirkland-based Kenworth Trucks has introduced a new model heavy duty truck designed for governmental and construction trades service.

The T470 is powered by a 9-liter Cummins diesel engine with 345 horsepower and 1,150 pound-feet of torque.

The new model is designed for service in dump truck, snowplow, refuse truck, concrete mixer and other uses.

The T470 is available with either single or tandem rear axles and manual or automatic transmissions. The new truck has the same high-technology dash installed in Kenworth's heavy-duty Class 8 trucks.

Kenworth is a division of Paccar Inc. of Bellevue, the world's third largest heavy-duty truck maker after Daimler AG and Volvo.

Paccar owns the Kenworth, Peterbilt and DAF brands. Kenworth has manufacturing plants in Renton and Seattle among other places worldwide

A plan to repurchase $50 million worth of Alaska Air Group stock was been approved by the airline holding group's board, the company announced today.

Alaska Air Group is the SeaTac-based holding company for Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air.

The repurchase plan comes at a time when the company's stock has fallen to about half of what it sold for late last year.

The company's stock price rose nearly 5 percent today to $16.36 a share. The stock's 52-week high is $30.95 a share.

The company suspended a stock buyback program last year amid sharply rising fuel prices that put a strain on airlines' cash balances.

The repurchases will come from cash on hand.

Bill Ayer, the airline's chairman, said the program will reward stockholders without threatening the airline's cash situation.

Fuel prices have dropped dramatically since last summer, but have risen again moderately from their lows last December.

Stock buyback programs are designed to enhance stock prices by reducing the number of public shares outstanding.

A week away from Father’s Day, here’s a look at how Americans plan to celebrate June 21 – by the numbers – thanks to the National Retail Federation and the U.S. Census Bureau.

64.3 million – Fathers in America
$90.89 – average amount expected to be spent per father to celebrate in 2009
9,003 – men’s clothing stores in America (if you’re looking for a tie)
$1.3 billion – amount expected to be spent on clothing gifts
23,270 – sporting goods stores in America (maybe he’d like a fishing pole)
$502 million – amount expected to be spent on sporting goods
78 million – Americans who participated in a barbecue over the last year
140,000 – stay-at-home dads in America
2.9 million – preschoolers who are cared for by dads while moms work
1.8 million – single fathers in the U.S. in 2008
8 percent – of those fathers were raising three or more children under 18
51 percent – of those 1.8 million fathers were divorced; 25 percent were never married; 19 percent were separated; 5 percent were widowed
43 percent – of the 1.8 million single fathers earned more than $50,000
31 percent – of custodial fathers (a total of 678,000) were due child support
43 percent – of custodial fathers received all due child support (about the same percentage as custodial mothers)
$6,210 – amount those fathers individually received, on average, in 2005
53 percent – of children under 6 who daily ate breakfast with their fathers in 2006
71 percent – of childrren under 6 who likewise ate dinner
6 – average number of times children aged 3 to 5 were read to by a father during a week in 2006

Regular gasoline prices in the Tacoma area are on an up elevator these days with average prices rising more than 3 cents a gallon just since Thursday.

While that trend is troubling, average regular unleaded prices here remain nearly 20 cents below the $3-a-gallon level according to tacomagasprices.com.

And while experts think there's a good chance that gas may top $3 a gallon here before summer's over, there's almost no chance that they'll be anywhere near what we saw last summer.

At this time last year, in fact, average regular gas prices in the Tacoma area were $4.275 a gallon, more than $1.47 a gallon higher than now.

And bargain hunters can still find regular gas available for less than $2.60 a gallon at several ARCO and Costco stations in the area.

Blame the rise in crude oil prices, which hit an 8-month high Thursday at more than $72 a barrel. But prices have retreated modestly since then.

No one in the industry expects prices to hit the $140 a barrel level that they did in mid-summer last year.

Gas prices have mirrored the economy's steep drop and halting recovery.

Take a look at the steep fall off in Tacoma prices beginning in mid-summer last year and the seasonal, but partial recovery shown in this chart of Tacoma gas prices over the last two years.

The Caribbean band Island Jamz will kick off a summertime concert series at downtown Tacoma's Tollefson Plaza on Friday, July 10.

The Summer Lunch Series will continue every Friday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. through Sept. 25, said Vy Dotson, Tollefson Plaza coordinator for the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce.

The entertainment will include a variety of acts from "Shakespeare in the Parking Lot" to acoustic music from local performers.

In addition to the entertainment, food vendors will set up shop to offer lunch fare for downtowners attending the series.

Tollefson Plaza is the triangular pink concrete gathering place with the invisible water feature just south of the Marriott Hotel on Pacific Avenue.

Think auto dealers are suffering from sales shock?

Consider the fate of heavy truck sellers in the recession as illustrated by new sales figures from WardsAuto.com for heavy duty truck sales in Canada.

Those figures show sales for the largest road-going trucks, Class 8's, in Canada were down 53.4 percent in May from the same month a year earlier.

Particularly hard hit were two brands built by Bellevue's Paccar, Kenworth and Peterbilt. Sales of Class 8 Kenworths in Canada fell to 149 in May from 412 in the same month a year earlier. Peterbilt sales were off 82.1 percent in the same period.

Peterbilt dealers in Canada sold just 47 Class 8 trucks in May 2009 compared with 272 in May 2008.

The market for extra large aircraft such as Boeing's 747-8 and Airbus's A380 won't be as robust as the manufacturers had hoped Boeing said in a new forecast issued today.

The company predicted that the market for jets with more than 400 seats over the next 20 years will be 25 percent less than Boeing had predicted last year.

Last year's prediction called for sales of 980 aircraft of thst size over the next two decades. This year's new forecast calls for 740 jumbo jet sales over the next 20 years.

Already, the recession has weakened the market for both aircraft with Airbus customers talking of cancellations or deferrals of deliveries of the 550-seat A380 and with tepid sales for the 747-8, Boeing's new version of the iconic jumbo jet.

Randy Tinseth, Boeing's vice-president of marketing, said the demand for large aircraft will be particularly weak for freighters.

Emirates, Airbus's largest A380 customer with 58 on order, already has pulled an A380 off the New York-Dubai run and substituted a smaller Boeing 777 because the larger jet was operating with too many emply seats.

The Boeing forecast, released in London, calles for a demand for 29,000 new aircraft worldwide over the next 20 years. That's a reduction of 400 from the 2008 forecast.

Seattle's Gene Juarez Salon & Spas will open a remodeled salon and a new spa in an updated South Hill Mall in Puyallup June 29.

The updated store will follow the model created by the upscale beauty purveyor in its flagship salon in Seattle's University Village location.

The new decor, said the company, will convey warmth and luxury as well as a touch of Northwest heritage.

The 6,100-square-foot space will allow Gene Juarez to offer new services at the Mall: massage, waxing, nail, makeup and facial services in addition to the traditional hair services, the company said in a news release.

South Hill mall and several of its major merchants are spending millions of dollars remodeling the 20-year-old mall. That mall update is due to be finished before Christmas next fall.

Alaska Airlines is offering travelers 25 percent off airfares between Alaska cities for travel between June 16 and through Sept. 30.

The tickets are available only on Alaska's Web site, www.alaskaair.com. They must be purchased by 11 p.m. Alaska time Thursday.

Travel to and from Pruhoe Bay is not included in the sale.

Tacoma Goodwill Industries will open its newest store on Tacoma's Sixth Avenue June 18th, the non-profit organization announced today.

The new store at 5401 Sixth Avenue will stock some 20,000 items including used clothing, shoes, household goods and other items.

The store will be Goodwill's eighth store in Pierce County and its 22nd store in its multi-county network.

The 19,000-square-foot store was a former Long's Drug location.

The new retail operation will create 35 jobs, Goodwill said.

Standard and Poor's Rating Agency cited the City of Puyallup's relatively strong economy and sound fiscal situation in raising the city's bond rating this week.

The rating agency upped the bond rating from A+ to AA-. A higher bond rating potentially could lower the cost of borrowing money for the Pierce County city.

The S&P report said the key to raising the bond rating was financial stability and relative economic prosperity in Puyallup.

Puyallup in recent months has seen an influx of new economic activity including news that a nationwide auto parts retailer, O'Reilly Auto Parts Co. plans to create a distribution center in Puyallup and hire as many as 400 workers.

A French specialty plastics firm is relocating from Seattle to Puyallup, and a Seattle developer is investing $45 million to upgrade a former Puyallup microchip plant to current standards. The Ohio owners of the city's South Hill Mall are also investing millions to renovate the 20-year-old mall.

Federal Way's Weyerhaeuser Co. and an Austrian company, Lenzing, are collaborating on a project to develop new non-woven fabric directly from fibers made from wood.

The two companies will build a pilot plant in Lenzing, Austria, to produce experimental quantities of the non-woven material from lyocell, fibers created from cellulose, a wood product.

Non-woven fabrics, are typically made from fibers that are bonded together to create a fabric rather than woven or knitted together.

An example of a non-woven fabric is DuPont's Tyvek, used in building construction to protect wood from moisture.

The pilot plant will help the two companies explore the possibilities for reducing the cost of producing the wood-based fabric.

Wal-Mart recently offered to buy the Tacoma Elks' property at S. 23rd Streets and Union, but the organization turned down the retail giant's bid.

"Wal-Mart was one of the bidders -- but I won't take that one," Gary Gaimbrone said Wednesday. Gaimbrone is the Tacoma Elks' special representative and is in charge of the lodge, including the property's sale.

Gaimbrone said Wal-Mart's bid was close in price to the one he plans on presenting to the membership.

"The problem with Wal-Mart is that they have too long of a contingency period," Gaimbrone said, adding that he was concerned the company would come back with a lower bid during that time period.

The News Tribune called Wal-Mart for comment, but has not heard back.

He wouldn't say who was the winning bidder. Gaimbrone will present the offer he's selected at a meeting of the Elks' membership July 1. The members will then vote whether to approve it.

Ray Velkers, a commercial real estate broker representing The Elks, said the group is close to an agreement with "a developer that has offices locally."

The 17 acre property in Central Tacoma has been for sale since early this year.

The Tacoma Elks plan on selling the property and then building a new lodge for its 3,000 members at the Allenmore Golf Course in the next two to three years.

Happy Days is here again.

In Lakewood, on Bridgeport Way. Complete with a new kitchen and refurbished restaurant and lounge. Add a new gaming area.

The Happy Days Casino, Bar & Restaurant – at 11521 Bridgeport Way – this week returned to operation with a soft opening, said Tony Averitt, marketing manager.

With 100 employees and after $200,000 in improvements, the casino will host its grand opening this weekend with a performance by country band Broken Trail from 9:30 p.m. until 1:30 a.m. both Friday and Saturday.

The 11,000-square-foot casino features a range of card games, pool tables, video arcade, dance floor and stage, Averitt said.

The new owner, Douglas Searle, said today that he is aware of problems that faced the previous owner. “The prior tenant just up and left,” he said. “We heard all the stories.”

The original Happy Days opened as a restaurant in 1989 and closed as a restaurant and casino in January 2008. Searle said that he found a cache of old business records and was able to contact some former employees and offer jobs at the new establishment.

The casino is licensed with the State Gambling Commission, according to the commission Web site. The license expires in 2010.

David L. Calhoun, chairman of the management board and chief executive officer of The Nielsen Company B.V., has been elected at The Boeing Co.'s newest board member.

Calhoun, 52, will take office immediately. The company said he is expected to serve on the Boeing board's audit and finance committees.

"Dave is an exceptional executive with a deep understanding of our business and what it takes to succeed in global markets," said Boeing Chairman Jim McNerney. "I'm grateful he agreed to join our board and I look forward to his contributions to our company."

Prior to his 2006 move to Nielsen, a global information and media company, Calhoun spent more than 25 years at General Electric, where he held several senior positions including vice chairman of the company and president and CEO of the GE Infrastructure, GE Transportation, and GE Aircraft Engines businesses.

SeaTac's Horizon Air has altered its fall flight schedule to respond to customers' suggestions for better timed flights.

The new schedule takes effect Aug. 23. The schedule is available on the regional airline's Web page www.alaskaair.com.

Most of the major changes involve retiming of flights between Boise and Spokane; Boise and Idaho Falls, Idaho; Bend, Ore. and Los Angeles; Redding, Calif., and Seattle, and Flagstaff, Ariz. and Los Angeles.

"We keep in close contact with our frequent fliers, and many of the adjustments to our schedule are being made directly in response to what they shared with us," said Dan Russo, the airline's vice president of marketing and communications.

The fanfare for the transition from analog television to digital TV has been playing for months on television.

And Friday it may actually happen.

The date for the changeover was postponed from February to June earlier this year when the federal government got nervous that the public wasn't sufficiently prepared.

Now, with hundreds of public service announcements aired about the changeover, the TV stations are pulling the trigger.

Some of the lesser known stations have already switched to digital, but most of the local stations will flip the switch Frday. Here are the transition times:

KOMO-TV Channel 4 ABC 11:59 p.m. Friday
KING-TV Channel 5 NBC 11:59 p.m. Thursday
KIRO-TV Channel 7 CBS 9:00 a.m. Friday
KCTS-TV Channel 9 PBS 4:00 a.m. Friday
KSTW-TV Channel 11 UPN Noon Friday
KCPQ-TV Channel 13 Fox 9:00 a.m. Friday
KONG-TV Channel 6 Independent 9 a.m. Friday
KTBW-TV Channel 14 TBN Already switched
KMYQ-TV Channel 22 MyNetwork 9:00 a.m. Friday
KBTC-TV Channel 28 PBS 9:00 a.m. Friday
KWPX-TV Channel 15 Ion Already switched
KUNS-TV Channel 51 Univision 6:00 a.m.

People with cable television r satellite TV should make the transition seamlessly. Those using antennas will need an converter box to see the over-the-air channels. Coupons are available to help pay the cost of those boxes, usually about $50 or $60.

Full information on the transition is available at the Web site www.DTV2009.gov.

If you’re thinking about having lunch or dinner at the Tacoma Elks Club this summer, you’ll need to reconsider.

The dining room at the venerable private club will be closed in July and August. So says Club manager Dom Buffamonte.

“We are going to make a cutback in service for lunches and dinners for July and August,” he explained earlier today. “We’re still going to have our banquets, and our lounge is open.”

Buffamnte said business has slowed with the recession.
"That’s the problem, it’s everywhere," he said. “Business is down anyway during those months. We’re going to cut back a little. We are just tightening our belt for a couple of months. In September, the economy will be back up.”

Microsoft stepped back into the ring last week with a renovated version of Bing – its search engine that has undergone a series of re-branding efforts to make it more competitive with, say, Google.

And if Bing wins the clicking duel, maybe Wikipedia or Webster will coin a new verb after the famed search engine as they have for its No. 1 competitor, (though Binging or Banging things doesn’t have the same ring as Googling them).

In my non-tech-minded attempt to give the newly revamped contender a chance at my searching devotions, I have assembled a few rudimentary tests for comparison. Here are my results:

1. My first priority was Binging and Googling myself, Whitney K. Coleman, to see which engine brought up my personal Web site.

Bing brought up someone elses Facebook page, the stats of a male basketball player at Monmouth University (Go Hawks?) and, eventually, a column I had written for Examiner.com – but no Web site on the first page.

Google, however, brought up my site right out of the gate. Maybe it had been conditioned by my frequent, vain attempts at Googling myself.

Google: 1 pt.

2. Next, I tested the application I use most often – maps – to guide me through the still-foreign streets of Tacoma.

I generally have a faint idea of where I want the map to take me, such as part of a business or restaurant name. My current project is compiling maps for out-of-town guests to my wedding, so I gave Bing a swing at it.

I searched for directions from Eastminster Presbyterian Church, Wichita, KS to Terradyne Country Club, Andover, KS – and got the exclamation-mark-in-yellow-triangle symbol, which is never good.

Bing said that this was not an exact match and asked if I just wanted to use just Wichita, KS instead. Apparently it needs a full address.

I would have to Google the church and country club to get the full address.

Google gave me suggested addresses for each, from which I chose the correct ones. It plotted the best route on the map, and I saved the map as a pdf to be dispersed amongst the groom’s Oklahoma family members.

Google: 1 pt.

3. While reading an article at NYTimes.com, I clicked a Bing ad that offered updates on flight times. By typing “Flight“ followed by the flight number, both Bing and Google bring up relevant information, including whether or not the flight is on time, from FlightStats.com.

Bing topped Google on this one by bringing up the information on its search page in a neat, legible format; whereas, Google provided a link to FlightStats.com for the info.

Bing: 1 pt.

4. Movie Times. I’m still hoping to see the Earth movie on the big screen. Though I may have missed my chance, I searched “Earth movie times.“

Bing brought up movie times in Middleton, New York, which is an odd default location considering Microsoft is just north of here in Seattle.

I clicked the option to change my location and Bing brought up a settings page. Cool! I could filter out sexually explicit images and text or choose to have searches returned in Swedish. I digress.

I’ve never seen an options page like that in Google, which might have just memorized my location based on frequent searches (an unfair advantage since I’m new to Bing).

According to Google and Bing (with the new location saved), a dollar theatre in Renton and drive-in in Port Orchard are still showing the life-size animal picture.

Considering Google's unfair advantage, I declare this one a tie.

5. And one random search to top off the test:

I wanted to know how many calories were in the sake I had with sushi last night.

A search for “calories in sake“ on Bing brings up all the information on the search page. No more clicks are required to find out that there are 39 calories per fluid ounce in the rice wine, according to the USDA, and that I had too much of it.

The same search on Google brings up a link to caloriecount.com, which was the second link on Bing’s page. It takes another click to get to the calorie count from Google.

But if you spell sake like “saki,“ both engines bring up a link to the outdated dailyplate.com, which has to take you to livestrong.com to get the facts – which are not necessarily accurate since they are entered by the general public.

When it comes to calories, sometimes it's better not to know anyway.

Bing: 1 pt.

In the end, the score is tied 4to 4.

Since I use maps the most, I’ll probably stick with tried-and-true Google for most things. But it’s nice to know I have options – and that Microsoft is willing to spend $100 million in advertisements to entice me to use their option.

Feel free to perform and tell us about your own tests of the dueling search engines in the comment portion below.

Businesses eager to jump on the green bandwagon might be eligible for a little help from Tacoma Alliance for Clean Technology and Sustainability (ACTS).

Facilitated by the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber, ACTS is looking for applicants to a pilot program for “green businesses.“

ACTS will select 15 businesses to have access to existing resources for reducing their carbon footprints in “cost-effective and measurable ways,“ according to a release.

The businesses also will be included in promotional efforts by the alliance and collaborating state and local groups.

So far, Print NW and FSC Supplier are listed in ACTS’s business directory as partners in the effort.

Applications for the yearlong program are available at www.tacomaacts.org and due June 30.

A new study issued this month by the Milken Institute ranks the Seattle area as the nation's second largest tech center behind only the San Francisco Bay's Silicon Valley.

The study, based on 2007 numbers, moves the Seattle area up a notch from a similar study in 2003 when the Boston-Cambridge area in Massachusetts ranked second. That area dropped to third place in the new study.

Ranking fourth is the Washington, D.C. area followed by Los Angeles, Dallas and San Diego.

According to the Milken study, some 226,000 workers in the Seattle area work in high tech which includes such big sectors such as software development and aerospace (read Microsoft and Boeing).

The study notes that areas with concentrations of high tech industry may be poised to emerge from the recession earlier than other cities.

That thesis agrees with the findings of a Moody's.com study last week that ranked the Seattle-Tacoma area as one of the areas most likely to rebound from the recession early.

Seattle isn't mounting the kind of high-dollar effort to attract Russell Investment's headquarters to the Emerald City as Tacoma is to keep its largest downtown employer here.

That's the news revealed in Sunday Seattle Times story about the tug-of-war between the two cities for the favor of the international investment advisory firm.

Part of Seattle's reluctance to go head-to-head with Tacoma is driven by a gentleman's agreement among regional cities not to poach companies from each other.

And part of that reticence is the result of political pressure from both the likes of U.S. Rep. Norm Dicks and from the state to let Tacoma take the lead in the quest to keep a valuable employer in the region.

That doesn't mean that the Seattle business community in the form of the Downtown Seattle Association and Seattle developers with skyscrapers to fill haven't mounted a campaign to bring Russell to vacant space in downtown Seattle.

But the Seattle mayor's office has offered only token help in that recruiting effort, and the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce has adopted a hands-off attitude.

Tacoma's effort is powered by $148 million in benefits ranging from tax breaks for sales tax on construction to business and occupation tax loopholes for financial service companies. The Tacoma package includes 500 parking spots and a $66 million cosmetic and functional upgrade of downtown's streetscapes.

Russell expects to make its decision on the headquarters issue by fall.

Its space requirements, once as high as one million square feet, have dropped to as little as half of that as the economy has shrunk and Russell has pared down its staff to cope.

It sounds too obvious when Audrey Godwin says businesses fail primarily because their owners run out of cash. But Godwin, a certified public accountant, sees cash management as a skill business owners need to strengthen.

"Knowing what your cash balances are today and during the next six months is essential for a healthy and sustainable business," she said.

The City of Tacoma has booked Godwin to teach cash flow management to small business owners Wednesday as part of its ongoing series of Economic Gardening workshops.

Godwin will teach two free sessions: 8-10 a.m. and 5:30-7:30 p.m. The workshops will be at The Evergreen State College-Tacoma Branch, 1210 Sixth Ave., Room 105. Parking is available in the campus lot in front of the building. Refreshments and light snacks will be served.

For more information or to reserve your spot by phone, contact Christine Clifford at (253) 573-2435 or cclifford@cityoftacoma.org.

Laughing Lotus, a new store opening Friday on Sixth Avenue, will bring artistry and knickknacks from villages around the world to an even more central location at 3013B 6th Ave.

Four retailers – Dockmandu, Matur Suksema, Rustic Trails and Suradi imports – have joined forces and resources to bring their traveler’s treasures closer to potential customers.

“The fact is four businesses in one location is our way of getting through the recession,“ said Amy McDonald, owner of Suradi Imports. “That way we have shared expenses and shared staffing.“

Suradi Imports and Dockmandu had retail businesses in the Tide Flats for more than five years – until the closure of the Eleventh Street bridge made them too hard to find.

So the pair moved to Sixth Avenue about a year ago to start Far & Wide at 606 N. Prospect St.

And now they’re moving again, inviting the other two wholesale retailers to try a hand at store ownership with them.

Customers will find a world’s worth of goodies at Laughing Lotus‘ opening bash 11 a.m. Friday.

Suradi Imports offers home and garden décor and art from Java, Indonesia, while Seattle-based Matur Suksema sells handicraft products such as beaded baskets from Bali, Indonesia.

Dockmandu’s stock ranges from Vietnamese pots to Mexican handicrafts.

And Lakewood-based Rustic Trails imports carpets, copperware and baskets from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The products are fairly-traded and made from sustainable materials, says McDonald. The retailers would know because they travel to the prospective villages to pick up the goods.

Suradi Imports and Matur Suksema also have online stores, but McDonald said they chose to open the store instead of pouring their efforts into generating more online business.
Laughing Lotus will be open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

This Friday at 7p.m. travelers to China and India will share their stories at a monthly travel talk session.

A Thurston Co. court granted approval today of a consent decree that bans Kent-based All My Sons Moving and Storage from doing business in the state.

The moving company attracted the attention of the state's Utlities and Transportation Commission after customers complained about inaccurate in moving cost estimates. alleged overcharges and mishandled damage claims.

The WUTC stripped All My Sons of its permit to operate a moving company business in Washington in November 2008. The commission ordered the company to halt operations here.

The commission in February complained to the Thurston County Superior Court that the company had failed to comply with that order and continued to conduct business after the order went into effect.

All My Sons, the WUTC complained, continued to advertise its services and continued handling customer moves after the permit was revoked.

All My Sons has filed to dissolve its business and is liquidating the company, the WUTC said in a press release.

Boeing rival Airbus is seeking as much as $5 billion in government aid to pay for development costs for its A350 jetliner, Bloomberg.com reports.

The aid request may refuel protests from Boeing over European government subsidies to Airbus. The A350 is a twin-engine, high technology jet designed to compete with Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and its 777.

The aid would come from four countries, France, Germany, Britain and Spain whose factories would play a major role in building the A350.

Boeing says the loans give Airbus an unfair advantage because Boeing must seek financing either from its own internal earnings or from private sources to finance the risky business of designing a new plane.

Typically, European governments have provided about a third of the financing for Airbus planes.

Airbus contends that it has paid back that financing plus interest on previous projects.

Airbus counters that Boeing receives government aid of its own through NASA grants for developmental work on aerospace research.

Two Indian airlines, hit by slowing air traffic, are considering asking Boeing Co. to defer deliveries of billions of dollars worth of new aircraft they have on order.

Both Air India and Jet Airways officials told reporters at an aviation conference in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia that they may want to postpone deliveries of new jets from Boeing while their business recovers.

Air India has $8 billion worth of new planes on order including 27 Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Jet Airways has placed orders for 10 Dreamliners.

The delivery of the first Dreamliners is running almost two years behind schedule because of technical problems Boeing and its suppliers encountered in assembling the first of the new jets.

The first production Dreamliner had been scheduled to be delivered in May 2008 to launch customer All Nippon Airways. That delivery is now scheduled for the first half of 2010.

The first test Dreamliner is due to fly later this month.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways also is considering deferring delivery of some of the $10 billion plus in orders it has placed with both Boeing and Airbus.

Today is the last day you can use Sea-Tac Airport's increasingly popular cell phone waiting lot north of the terminal.

The lot will close down Tuesday while the airport doubles the lot's size. A new lot will open in about a month, said the airport.

In the meantime, the airport hopes those waiting for friends, associates and relatives to arrive won't revert to their old habits of circling the airport drives or parking along the freeway shoulders (illegal and prone to attract police attention).

Instead, the airport suggests that people on airport pickup duty park in the airport garage's hourly parking floor which costs $2 for 30 minutes.

The cost of the cell phone lot was free.

The second flight test subhunting Boeing P-8A Poseidon aircraft took off on its first flight today from Renton Field where it was built.

The plane's flight ended with a landing at Seattle's Boeing Field at 1:28 p.m. The plane had left the ground at 10:32 a.m.

While on its first flight, the aircraft made a low pass over Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, one of the bases where the Poseidon will be based when it becomes operational.

The first P-8A took off from Renton on April 25. The Navy has asked Boeing to build five test aircraft, three for flying tests and two for ground testing.

The second test aircraft, S!, is undergoing strength testing at Renton.

The P-8A is a militarized version of Boeing's best-selling 737 twin jet airliner. The P-8A is equipped with advanced electronics to find submarines under water and a bomb bay to house weaponry to destroy the submarine.

The Navy has ordered 117 of the planes. India is also ordering the aircraft for its maritime surveillance needs.

Costco Wholesale's seven percent same store sales decline in May isn't as alarming as it first appears when you peer behind the raw numbers.

That sales drop raised some alarm among Wall Street analysts who had expected a better performance this week from Costco.

But the sales declines were not so much about customers buying fewer goods, but the goods, particularly gasoline, selling for lower prices this year.

Gas is now selling for substantially less than it was at this time last year, thus the drop in gross sales. Without the effect of the change in gas prices, Costco domestic sales would have dropped only one percent at stores open last year.

Overall sales were also deflated by the relatively strong dollar. If the dollar exchange rate had remained at the same level as last year, Costco reported, foreign store sales would have climbed seven percent.

The order pipeline was dry again this week for The Boeing Co.

The aerospace company reported no new orders for commercial aircraft this week. That leaves Boeing with zero net orders for 2009.

The company has booked 60 new orders this year, but airlines have canceled a like number, most of them for the much-delayed 787 Dreamliner.

SeaTac-based Alaska and Horizon airlines remained in the top tier of domestic airlines in May in on-time performance according to new statistics from Flightstats.com.

Horizon flights last month were nearly 88 percent on time, and Alaska flights were nearly 85 percent on time.

Those on-time percentages put Horizon in fifth place among the nation's 36 airlines and Alaska in 10th place.

That 10th place finish for Alaska puts it in first place among the nation's seven traditional "legacy" carriers such as Continental, Delta, Southwest and United.

On-time performance is defined as within 15 minutes of the scheduled time.

At the top of Flightstats' list for May was Hawaiian Airlines with 89.83 percent of its flights on time. In 36th place was Comair, a regional airline, with 65.49 percent of its flights on time.

Demand is up and donations are down.

So Goodwill is looking for assistance.

“More people are coming to our stores, which is a good thing, but in these tough economic times, people are tending to hold on to items more. That causes us to dip into our reserves,” said spokesman Matthew Erlich earlier today.

“We need help,” he said. “We need clothes that people can wear, shoes and household items.”

According to a recent release, the agency this year expects to see a 20 percent increase from the 5,200 people – a record in itself – who benefited from Goodwill training and job-placement services in 2008. Those services are provided as a result of sales of donated items at Goodwill stores.

Last year, the agency received 48.7 million pounds of donated items from people in its 15-county Washington catchment area. This year, said Tacoma Goodwill CEO Terry Hayes, donations “simply haven’t kept pace with the need.”

Attended donation stations are available at some WalMart stores in the South Sound and at all Goodwill stores. A complete list of locations where donations may be left is available at www.tacomagoodwill.org.

The Tacoma Fire Department responded to a call of a man trapped at 9:25 this morning in the yard of metals dealer and recycler Simon Metals LLC, formerly Joseph Simon & Sons, at 2202 River St. in the Tideflats.

Pierce County Medical examiner identified the man in his 40s as Luis Rodriguez of Tacoma. Tacoma Fire spokeswoman Jolene Davis said he died at the scene after being trapped under materials.

Fire officials were briefing what looked like Rodriguez's family members around noon at the scene.

Twenty firefighters and the department’s technical rescue team answered the call Friday morning, Davis said, as well as representatives of the Pierce County Medical Examiner’s office and some state agencies. The Medical Examiner continued to work at the scene through the late afternoon.

The Washington Department of Labor & Industries (L&I) has begun investigating the incident, the conclusions of which will not be available for more than a month, said spokeswoman Elaine Fischer.

Fischer said there was another work-related incident – originally thought to be another fatality – involving electrical work at a farm in Eastern Washington on Friday.

"Two fatalities in one day is unusual," Fischer said. "On average, there are about two a week in the state."

L&I receives claims of about 100 deaths attributed to work-related injuries and illnesses in Washington each year.

In 2008, motor vehicle accidents were the most common cause of deaths reported to L&I, followed by machinery-related accidents and those involving a worker being struck by an object.

An official at Simon Metals said that the firm had no immediate comment on the incident. The company will be closed until Monday.

If you’re looking for good economic news - anything, just a hint, please just throw me a bone - there’s a glimmer or two from today’s State Profile for Washington as compiled by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., a faderal agency that insures, regulates and monitors financial institutions.

The good news shimmers in some of the comparisons between the fourth quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 – but not, obviously, in the comparisons from Q1 ‘09 and Q1 ‘08.

To wit:

• Total assets for 96 institutions in the state have risen to $80.02 billion now from $79.88 billion last quarter.
• The median percentage of net loan losses has gone from 0.55 percent of total loan value in Q4 to 0.58 in Q1. Okay, that’s not so good – and it’s even worse when compared to losses in Q1 ‘08, a year ago, when the median percentage was 0.00, or zip, nada.
• Return on assets has improved from Q4, from minus-0.37 percent to minus-0.04 percent in Q1.
• Residential real estate has gone from from 119 percent of Tier 1 Capital to 111.1 percent, indicating less of a concentration in single-family home loans.

Citing various non-banking numbers, the FDIC says:

• The unemployment rate in the state has gone from 6.2 percent in Q4 ‘08 to 8.4 percent in Q1 ‘09.
• Single-family home permits dropped 49.6 percent in Q1 from 45.7 percent in Q4. Multi-family permits were down 58.3 percent in Q1, compared to a dip of 44.3 percent in Q4. Okay, that’s not so good either.
• The home price index was down 5.2 percent most recently, where it had been down 3.8 percent in Q4 and actually up 2.8 percent in Q1 of ‘08. Which is good news if you're buying a house.

With a deadline looming for the end of their franchises, nearly 800 Dodge, Chrysler and Jeep dealers are selling off their inventories at bargain prices, Edmunds.com reports.

The auto pricing research firm says its figures show that Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealers who've been told their last day as Chrysler Corp. dealers is Tuesday are cutting prices to clear out their inventories.

Those dealers on average are making $2,700 less per vehicle than other Chrysler Corp. dealers not scheduled to be eliminated from the corporate fold, Edmunds reports.

Nearly 800 of those dealers were told three weeks ago they were being culled from the ranks of Chrysler Corp. franchise holders because of falling sales nationwide.

Chrysler, reorganizing in bankruptcy court, will honor those vehicle warranties at the remaining Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep dealers.

Though we've got no specific information on their pricing, two Tacoma-area dealers are among those leaving the business: Tacoma Dodge and Milam Jeep. Milam will retain its Mazda franchise.

Chicago's United Airlines, which hasn't ordered a new jet since 2001, is back in the market for new aircraft.

The company has told both Boeing and its rival, Airbus, that it is looking for as many as 150 new planes to replace its aging fleet of widebodies and Boeing 757s.

United hopes that by shopping during the deepest recession since the Depression, it can negotiate attractive deals with the two major aircraft makers for what may be orders worth as much as $20 billion.

The average age of United's planes is 13 years, among the oldest among major airlines. Its rival, American Airlines, has an even older fleet at 16 years, but has committed to replacing its mainline standby, the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 with new Boeing 737-800s.

After the 2001 terrorist attacks that stunned the airline industry, Irish discount airline Ryanair, went shopping for a new fleet.

The prices it received from Boeing reportedly were substantially discounted.

Both Boeing and Airbus are having miserable order years.

Boeing, for instance, has net orders of zero this year. The company has had orders for 60 new planes, but has recorded an offsetting cancellation number of 60.

Tacoma's J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corp. will launch yet another high-tech tugboat this month from its ways on the Foss Waterway.

The launch of the M/V Justice is scheduled for 9:30 p.m. on Friday, June 12 at the company's shipyard at 401 East 15th Street.

The reason for the late hour? The tide. Martinac needs a high tide to ensure the vessel isn't damaged as its slides out of the construction shed into the waterway.

The Justice is one of a series of tugs that Martinac has built in the last couple of years. The shipyard, which built its reputation building tuna seiners, sat idle for several years after that business went overseas. The tug business has given the shipyard new life.

The Justice is being built for Boston Towing and Transporation Co. The 98-foor-long boat is powered by two 2,680 horsepower diesel engines driving thrusters that pivot beneath the boat's stern.

That pivoting action will give the Justice extraordinary maneuverability compared with conventional tugs whose propellers are fixed in position.

The new tug will carry 43,000 gallons of fuel and 9,800 gallons of water. The tug is 36 feet wide at its widest.

If you’re looking for a retail revolution to join – or just a job – you're in luck.

An Apple store is coming to the Tacoma Mall near you soon. And it's hiring.

The incoming Apple store is listing open positions in store management, graphic design, customer technology support, customer service and inventory, according to it’s Monster.com posting.

The job descriptions include an array of lofty perks, including “fulfillment, inspiration, adventure and advancement.”

And Apple’s job Web site says the company is happy to hire a range of prospective employees – from college grads to seasoned professionals.

There are about a dozen different positions to be filled at the new store.

Passenger traffic on two SeaTac-based air carriers, Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air, fell again in May as the recession cut business and pleasure travel worldwide.

Alaska reported its traffic was down 7.5 percent in May compared with May 2008. That decrease compares with a 6.3 percent decrease in capacity.

At Alaska's sister regional carrier, Horizon, business dropped 15.1 percent in May compared with May last year.
Capacity decreased by 12.9 percent in the same time period.

With traffic falling faster than the airlines can reduce flights, the two airlines' planes were less full last month that in the same month of 2008.

Alaska filled 76.8 percent of its seats with paying passengers last month compared with 77.8 percent in the same month last year.

At Horizon, 71.7 percent of seats were full in May. That compares with 73.6 percent in May 2008.

All of you in the Sonic drive-in fan club take heart. The second Puget Sound Sonic location may soon be under construction in Bonney Lake.

That's the word from local Sonic owner David Orem. Orem says he's hoping to pick up the building permits for his second South Sound location this week. He hopes to begin construction on Monday.

The new Sonic site is on a pad near the new Lowe's store.

The first Puget Sound Sonic opened on Meridian in Puyallup April 27 to huge queues of cars waiting for service.

The Oklahoma City-based hamburger chain features roller skating car hops, real limeades and carside ordering.

Orem says he's also narrowing his search for a Tacoma site. He's down to two now. He plans to pick between them for the first Tacoma Sonic soon.

The Chrysler Group and Fiat have agreed to honor the "Lemon Law" rights of buyers when the new company takes control of the U.S. automaker, the state Attorney Generals office reports today.

"The Lemon Law provides important protections for consumers whose new vehicles have recurring problems," said Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna.

The new Chrysler Group will honor those rights for vehicles sold or leased prior to the closure of the 'old' Chrysler, McKenna said.

Washington's Lemon Law allows consumers having trouble with their new cars to request an arbitration hearing through the AG's office. If the car is a lemon, then they may either have it replaced or bought back by the manufacturer.

The law sets up conditions to determine which cars qualify.

"Not only does this agreement help consumers, but increased consumer confidence means more sales benefiting the company and its workers," McKenna said.

Chrysler filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and is being bought by the Italian car maker Fiat.

Puget Sound Energy is offering something of a solution to those pesky high energy bills in the winter (and also those delightfully low bills in summer).

To help even the pain, the utility is encouraging customers to use budget payment plans – in addition to available assistance programs and energy-efficiency measures – to help manage their energy costs during this economic downturn and eventual recovery.

"Recognizing the current economic downturn, combined with the winter heating season that extended well into spring, PSE is urging our customers during the summer months to take advantage of our programs to pay and reduce their energy bills year round," said Bert Valdman, executive vice president and chief operating officer, in a release today.

The utility is encouraging electric and natural gas customers to enroll in the PSE budget payment plan by calling 888-225-5773 or contacting PSE online at www.PSE.com. More than 10 percent of PSE’s residential customers already participate.

Customers on the plan pay a predetermined amount each month, based on their previous electric or natural gas usage history, PSE said in the release. Over the course of the year, customers pay the same amount they would without the plan, but it is spread evenly among 12 monthly payments. PSE reviews actual usage periodically adjusts the average monthly amount, if necessary.

PSE also encourages income-eligible households needing help paying their spring heating bills to apply for energy-assistance. Approximately $7 million in help is still available with this year’s expanded funding of the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, and from PSE’s Home Energy Lifeline Program, or HELP. Both programs are administered by nonprofit community service agencies in each of the 11 counties PSE serves.

During the 2008-2009 winter heating season, PSE said, nearly 22,000 households received $18.5 million in bill-payment assistance. "In light of the economic difficulties many families in our service area are facing, it’s heartening to note that this year’s increased funding has already helped 8,000 more households pay their heating bills compared to a year ago," said Valdman.

Customers of Tacoma Power who are interested in a program similar to the cost-balancing initiative at PSE may call 253-502-8600 and ask about the Budget Billing Program.

A Red Robin restaurant – scheduled to open in early July at 10311 Gravelly Lake Drive SW, in the Lakewood Towne Center – is ready to hire 100 employees.

Red Robin is a casual dining chain featuring larger-than-life gourmet burgers, bottomless steak fries and kid-friendly menu items.

“We’re looking for team members who can offer great guest service in a kid- and family-friendly restaurant,” said Darren Donahue, general manager of the Lakewood Red Robin restaurant. “Our goal at every Red Robin® restaurant is to cultivate and maintain an in-restaurant environment that inspires upbeat and respectful team members, allowing us to put our guests’ needs first.”

The 5,858-square-foot building will fit the family atmosphere – and decor with birthday balloons and life-size robin statues – of the chain's 400 locations in the United State and Canada.

For information regarding employment, visit the new location or call the Red Robin recruitment line at 253-588-2888.

The Senate Appropriations Committee today approved funding for eight more Boeing C-17 airlifters for the Air Force.

The committee's action gives new hope that the California assembly line where the plane is built won't shut down next year when the planes currently ordered are completed.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri pushed for the additional purchases. The final assembly of the planes is in Long Beach, Calif. Many of the plane parts are built in a Boeing plant in Missouri.

The Pentagon had recommended that the Air Force buy no more of the four-engine transport planes. One of the C-17's main bases is Pierce County's McChord Air Force Base.

The Boeing Co. has trimmed its Washington workforce by 2,657 jobs through the end of May making good on its prediction that its payroll will be down 4,500 here in its commercial division by year's end.

New statistics from the aerospace company show Boeing dropped its workforce by 517 jobs in May. All of those jobs have not been layoffs. Some have been retirements or voluntary departures whose positions weren't refilled.

Boeing's employment in Washington topped out at about 77,000 last October before the company, anticipating business slackening, began trimming back.

Worldwide, the company says it will have 10,000 fewer workers on the payroll by the end of December than it had on Dec.31, 2008.

Summertime's usually robust travel demand is ordinarily a good time for airlines to sit back and watch the revenues roll as rivals call a truce in the fare wars.

Not so this summer. Demand is still tepid, and airlines with still too many seats going empty are keeping fares low to attract more passengers.

Witness what's happening in the Puget Sound area. Air fares on some flights are lower than they've been in two decades on selected departures. For instance:

With taxes included, you can now buy a roundtrip ticket from Sea-Tac to New York for $239, to Boston for $252 and for $216 to Baltimore.

Flights are still available for $120 roundtrip to San Francisco and for $139 to Los Angeles.

You have to be flexible to get the lowest fares. Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday departures are more likely to be low-priced as are early morning and late evening flights.

According to statistics compiled by FareCast.com, you're more likely to see those superlow fares for flights just a few days ahead of departure than those booked months ahead.

That's contrary to the usual rule, but these aren't ordinary times. Typically airlines reward early bookers with low prices, but in this year's case, airlines are finding too many seats remain unfilled as the flight time approaches, and they're cutting prices to clear out inventories.

That new rule applies if the plane still has a score or more of empty seats still unsold two weeks ahead, but if only a handful remain available two weeks in advance, they airline will put a premium price on them to snag last-minute fliers with a high price.

The National Retail Federation is out today with its latest update on the impact of retail business in the state. All the numbers are annual – for 2008.

According to the NRF:

• Retail establishments employed 520,288 people in Washington
• That’s 18 percent of the state’s total employment
• There were 33,461 retail establishments in Washington
• Total sales were $108.7 billion
• That’s 2.26 of total national retail sales

Drilling down:

• There were 199,128 restaurants and bars in the state
• 59,306 grocery and liquor stores
• 13,240 gas stations
• 12,391 furniture and home furnishing stores
• 31,182 clothing and clothing accessories stores

For a look at the full report – and to navigate an interactive map that will allow a search by state and by congressional district, click here.

A new forecast from Moody's Economy.com ranks Washington among five states expected to lead the recovery from the recession.

Three of the five states, Washington, Oregon and Idaho, are in the Pacific Northwest. The others on Moody's early bounce-back list are Colorado and Texas.

All but Texas earned their places on that list in part because of their concentration of high tech industries. Moody's expects high tech to lead the revival because businesses have been holding back on technology expenditures but will need new technology to enable their makeovers.

Texas made the short list because the lingering effects of the energy price runup last year buffered the depths of the recession.

All five states entered the recession late, so, the theory goes, the hole they've dug is not as deep as states where the recession has been doing its damage since as early as 2007.

Another reason for naming Washington and others as early recoverers: households in those five states have suffered less permanent damage than in other states. Thus discretionary household spending is expected to resume earlier.

Moody's predicts the bounce back will begin in Washington in this year's fourth quarter.

Some states won't see the beginning of the end of the recession until a year later, Moody's predicts.

Here's a link to a more complete story on the Moody's study.

Insure.com is out with its list of those cars that are the most – and least – expensive to insure.
Not surprisingly, the top four are high-performance sports cars, while SUVs and mini-vans top the list of cars that cost least to insure.
Here’s the Top Ten most and least expensive with an average cost for annual insurance. There will be differences, of course, depending on your insurer and other factors.

Most expensive to insure:
1. Nissan GT-R, $2,533 (pictured above)
2. Dodge Viper, $2,446
3. BMW M6, $2,236
4. Ford Shelby GT500, $2,186
5. Mercedes-Benz G-Class, $2,088
6. Audi S8, $2,071
7. BMW M5, $2,020
8. Hummer H2, $1,912
9. Lexus ISF, $1,881
10. Porsche 911, $1,819
11-20. Chevrolet Cobalt SS, Jaguar XK Series, BMW M3, Cadillac XLR, Audi R8, Land Rover Range Rover, Cadillac Escalade EXT, Honda S2000, BMW X6, Mercedes-Benz SL-Class

Least expensive to insure:

1. Hyundai Santa Fe, $832
2. Kia Sportage, $840
3. Hyundai Entourage, $848
4. Kia Sedona, $857
5. Kia Rio5, $870
6. Honda Odyssey, $871
7. Smart fortwo, $881
8. Saturn Vue, $911
9. Mazda Tribute, $913
10. Chrysler Town & Country, $915
11-20: Scion xB, Mazda Mazda5, Volkswagen Passat, Jeep Wrangler, Honda Accord, Suzuki Forenza, Lincoln Town Car,
Mazda Truck, Chevrolet Impala, Dodge Grand Caravan

For a look at the entire list, click here.

The recession has taken its toll on another long-lived South Sound car dealership.

Puyallup's Conforth-Campbell Buick-Pontiac-GMC, a business that began 71 years ago as H.O. Wylen Buick-Pontiac, has sold its business to the Harnish Dealership Group.

The sale has triggered a musical chairs-like rearrangement of auto showrooms.

The former Conforth-Campbell operation has moved from its dealership north of the Puyallup River to the former Harnish Subaru showroom at 820 River Road.

The Subaru dealership in the meanwhile consolidated its operations into the Harnish Lincoln Mercury store next door.

The former Conforth-Campbell dealership quarters, built in 2001, will soon go on the market, said Dave Conforth, former co-owner of the Pontiac-Buick-GMC dealership.

Conforth-Campbell's Auto Body and Collision Center at Pioneer Avenue and Second Street in downtown Puyallup will continue to operate independently, Conforth said.

Conforth's co-owner, Dave Campbell, has joined Harnish along with many other Cornforth-Campbell employees at the new River Road location.

Conforth said the acquisition makes sense for Harnish, which is consolidating as many nameplates under one ownership as possible to weather the sales downturns that have devastated the auto industry.

"They didn't have a truck in their lineup, so this is a good thing for them," he said. GMC is a separate line of trucks made by General Motors.

Both Chrysler and General Motors have told their dealers they are drastically cutting back on the number of dealerships to cope with declining sales.

General Motors has said it may kill off its Pontiac line and sell its Hummer, Saab and Saturn businesses.

The ideas might be big at Big Ideas Direct, but State Attorney General Rob McKenna says they’re also illegal. McKenna announced today he has sued the owners of the Woodinville LLC in Pierce County Superior Court alleging they violated consumer protection and prize/promotion laws.

Last month, McKenna sued Smart Automotive Group of Metairie, La. in Thurston County Superior Court for similar reasons.

According to a release today, the accusations include:

• The defendants advertised fictitious bank repossession sales and thus created a false sense of urgency. They variously used fictitious entities and claims such as “National Automobile Clearing House” and “Forced Liquidation.”
• The defendants advertised false savings. One claimed prices 75 percent off the MSRP for used vehicles (even though Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price is not related to used vehicles), and the other suggested vehicles would be sold at 95 percent off the “original price” – without defining the original price.
• False claims concerning financing, such as “O Down Delivers” and “pennies on the dollar.”
• Advertising “free” merchandise and prizes when the items were not actually free.

The state, according to McKenna’s office, is seeking court orders to stop deceptive practices and also asking for civil penalties and reimbursement of legal costs and restitution for any consumers affected by the alleged schemes.

Attempts to reach both dealers were unsuccessful this afternoon.

Eight Puget Sound area businesses and governments have been recognized by the American Heart Association as “Start! Fit-Friendly Companies” for spring 2009.

The City of Tacoma joins AAA Washington, Savers Inc./Value Village and Swedish Medical Center of Seattle with a “gold level” award for “achievements in improving the health of their employees.”

The City of Tukwila, King County, Physio Control and Premera Blue Cross have received “platinum level” recognition, according to an announcement today from the association.

Nationwide this spring, 445 companies and other organizations received the fit-friendly awards – given for a commitment to physical activity, nutrition and other healthful initiatives.

For more information, visit www.startwalkingnow.org.

If you haven't flown out of Sea-Tac Airport lately, you'll be surprised to see the progress the airport is making on several major projects.

The replacement of the 1944-vintage main runway appears to be moving swiftly toward completion. The construction on the light rail station on the International Boulevard side of the terminal is taking shape rapidly, and initial work on the airport's rental car terminal is moving quickly.

The three projects will add considerable capability to the airport when they're finished.

The main runway is being reconstructed from the ground up. The nearly 12,000-foot runway couldn't be taken out of service until recently because it was needed to service airport traffic. The completition of the airport's third runway last fall and the decrease in air traffic because of the recession has provided the airport a window of opportunity to close the runway for complete rebuilding.

The main runway, the easternmost of three at the airport and the airport's longest, was last overlaid with new asphalt in 1992. With this rebuild, the old runway is being completely removed, not just overlaid. The old asphalt and concrete is being ground up and recycled for use in other projects and as a base for the new runway.

The runway will also receive new electrical and drainage systems including advanced capability lighting and traffic control systems.

Both the main runway and the light rail station are expected to open this fall. The light rail line will connect the airport with downtown Seattle.

The rental car terminal is farther down the road. Its construction will allow rental car companies to vacate part of the existing garage.

Port of Tacoma Commissioner Ted Bottiger announced today that he will not run again for his commission seat. He has been on the commission since 1997.

"I’ve had a great public life and enjoyed it very much and now it’s time to slow down," Bottiger, 76, said.

Bottiger represented the port on the Tri-County Salmon Recovery Task Force and on the Governor's Blue Ribbon Transportation Commission. He also volunteered as the Associate Supervisor of the Pierce County Conservation District.

Prior to the port, Bottiger served in the state Legislature from 1964 to 1987. He was the Majority Leader of the State Senate his last five years there.

He said today that's he particularly proud of his effort to get the port to include the cost of its conservation programs in its financial reporting.

"This is the fourth time I've retired," Bottiger said.

He has no specific plans for his upcoming free time. He lives near Frederickson with his wife, Darlene.

The Boeing Co. gained orders for five more 787 Dreamliners last week, but lost orders for an identical number of 767s.

The airlines involved in the orders and cancellations weren't named by Boeing.

Last week's order activity leaves Boeing with a net gain of exactly 0 orders this year. The company has recorded 65 new orders this year, but lost an identical number of existing orders.

With no new net orders for the year so far, 2009, could be Boeing's worst order year ever. Just two years ago, the company recorded more than 1,400 net orders.

The nation's third largest auto parts retailer, O'Reilly Auto Parts, is bringing up to 400 new jobs to Puyallup.

Those workers will be employed at a new auto parts distribution center the Springfield, Mo.-based company is setting up at 1602 Industrial Park Way.

The company operates more than 3,200 auto parts stores in 38 states. Among the company's brands are Schuck's Auto Supply, Checker Auto Parts, Kragen Auto Parts and Murray's Discount Auto Stores.

"When we acquired CSK in July 2008," said Ed Randall, O'Reilly's director of property, "we knew we needed a distribution center in the Seattle area.

The company recently acquired the vacant warehouse near Levee Road to house that distribution center.

O'Reilly is already advertising for distribution center supervisors, route drivers and material handlers for its Puyallup location. Job descriptions and applications are available on the O'Reilly Web site at http://www.oreillyauto.com.

O'Reilly was founded in 1957 by a father-son team in Springfield, Mo. The company has grown rapidly in the last decade through acquisition of rival auto parts chains throughout the country.

It already has distribution centers in a variety of cities throughout the country including Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Houston, Dallas, Little Rock, Nashville Indianapolis and Detroit.

In the West, the company has distribution centers in Phoenix, Dixon, Calif., and Mendota Heights, Minn.

"In the current economy, it's a credit to the Puyallup community that O'Reilly chose to make such a substantial investment of capital and jobs here," said Puyallup City Manager Gary MeLean.

"As we've done with other businesses, city staff is working closely with O"Reilly to get plans and inspections approved quickly so the company can stay on schedule and open by the end of the year," he said.

Puyallup has had a run of good fortune in the economic development department in recent months despite the recession.

A French-owned high technology plastics company, Saint Gobain Performance Plastics, announced in February it was moving to Puyallup from Seattle. it brings 115 jobs to the area.

South Hill Mall earlier this year began a multi-million dollar renovation to celebrate its two decades in business in Puyallup, and a Seattle real estate firm the Benaroya Companies, bought a former microchip plant on South Hill and began a $45 million renovation to attract new businesses.