Federal Way's Weyerhaeuser Co. expects the sale of 140,000 acres of timberland in northwest Oregon will add $100 million to the company's earnings in the third quarter.

The forest products company is selling the land to Portland-based The Campbell Group for $300 million.

The Campbell Group is a land owner that buys and manages timberland for investors. Among the company's assets are 2.85 million acres of land worth $5.3 billion.

Weyerhaeuser, which has suffered because of the downturn in the homebuilding industry, is selling 82,000 acres of timberland in Washington.

Boeing supplier Spirit Aerosystems has signed a contract with PPG Industries to design and supply a new windshield for the next model of Boeing 737s.

The new windshields are designed with a layer of plastic on the cockpit side of the windshield to better protect the pilots from the effects of mid-air bird strikes.

The new windshields, designed to be installed in a planned updated version of the 737, are slightly small than existing windshields.

Spirit supplies Boeing's Renton 737 final assembly plant with 737 fuselages built in its Wichita, Kan. factory.

A fresh design – taller and more compatible with the surrounding historic structures than previous proposals – emerged this week for a new hotel in downtown Tacoma’s Brewery District.

The new concept, the result of than 18 months’ redesign effort driven in part by concerns of the Tacoma’s Landmarks Preservations Commission, Wednesday won informal approval and even praise from commission members.

“It’s great to get such a good response from the commission,” said Seattle developer Han Kim after Wednesday evening’s Landmarks Commission session.

"We got pretty beat up the last couple of times we were here.”

The commission had criticized the original conceptual designs for being too similar to “cookie cutter” hotel concepts more appropriate for freeway hotel sites rather than as part of an urban historic area.

The hotel site at South 21st and C streets is adjacent to the former Heidelberg Brewery building within the Union Station Conservation District.

“This is a big step forward,” said commission chairman Mark McIntire after after Kim’s group had presented their revised design at Wednesday’s commission meeting.

“We appreciate your responsiveness,” he said. “It shows a lot of diligence on your part.”
Kim and his Hotel Concepts development group first came to the commission in December 2007 with a preliminary plan for the new hotel.

Based on that initial feedback – much of it critical – from commission members, the developers presented a new concept in September last year for a pair of hotels. But the commission remained concerned that the hotels would clash with the prevailing architecture of the former warehouse area.

The newest design for a single 160-room hotel – likely to be branded a Holiday Inn Express – differs significantly from last September’s concept:

* The new design would occupy only an existing parking lot and the site of an old, featureless warehouse. The original designs called for demolition of parts of the brewery itself. Although the brewery, unused for its original purpose for more than two decades, was not architecturally significant, some historic building advocates didn’t want it summarily demolished because of its pivotal role for many years in Tacoma’s economy.

* The new building would rise eight stories high with six floors of hotel rooms and two floors of parking. The previous concept reached a maximum of five or six stories.

* The fresh design calls for seven stories of brick or masonry facing with only the top floor covered with stucco-like material. The older design concept called for several stories of stucco cladding. Commissioners feared that the brewery district hotel, if allowed to be built with so much stucco facing, would look similar to the Marriott Courtyard Tacoma near the Greater Tacoma and Trade Center. That hotel’s design has been critically panned for looking too much like an hotel design drawn from a corporate hotel catalog.

* The new design’s windows have been modified to more closely resemble windows in the muscular warehouse buildings of the district with distinct framing and side-by-side windows in each hotel room.
n The number of different types of bricks has been reduced from three to one to unclutter the building’s look.

* Through-the-wall heating and air conditioning units have been incorporated into the widow units below the glass. Many less expensive hotels have separate air conditioning unit exhaust grills penetrating the outside walls a foot or so below the windows.

* The ground floor hotel areas have been modified to include larger windows and awnings mimicing the retail shops in the area. The hotel, however, won’t have any retail spaces for rent.

* A rooftop metal-clad cupola resembles a similar, but larger structure atop the old brewery building that bore the sign identifying the building. The hotel cupola would be a backdrop for the Holiday Inn Express sign.

City historic preservation officer Reuben McKnight said the developers should seek formal commission approval for their design when it’s 75 to 90 percent complete. Johnson and Kim said completing the design could take several months.

In the meantime, Kim said he’ll begin looking for financing for the project, not an easy task during the current recession. At least two other hotels are planned for Tacoma, one on the Foss Waterway and the other near Point Defiance park at Point Ruston, the former site of the old Asarco copper smelter.

The new hotel, Kim said, won’t compete directly with those more pricey waterfront properties. The price range for rooms in the new hotel is expected to be in $100-plus range.

The line on Thursday – the second day of taking applications for positions at September’s Puyallup Fair – started forming at a half hour after midnight.

The Employment Security Department had changed its process, and rather than attempt to serve 3,000 people, as happened on Wednesday, today only 600 were given numbers promising an appointment.

“It went very smoothly handing out the numbers. It’s a great system, and it’s something we will continue to use,” said fair spokeswoman Karen LaFlamme early this afternoon.

The process will continue Friday, with 600 numbers assigned on a first-come, first-served basis to those people who arrive at the gate on the north side of the fairgrounds.

By 1 p.m. today, only some 50 people remained to be seen, said Theresa Hoffman, who heads the on-site ESD office.

She reported to LaFlamme that the greatest current need is for people applying for food-service positions.

Most jobs pay minimum wage, but some employers will offer more based on an applicant’s experience.

“The people today were pleasant and happy,” said LaFlamme.

How pleasant and happy? While they waited inside the ESD portable office, LaFlamme said, some were doing the Wave after a number was called.