April 2011
March 15, 2011
Karen West
When the aviation world was imploding in 2008 with stratospheric fuel prices and plummeting passenger demand, Alaska Air Group Inc. CEO Bill Ayer had some sage advice for navigating the storm and reversing his companys losses: Dont buy things you cant afford. Dont borrow money you cant pay back. Dont agree to things you dont…
- April 2011
March 15, 2011
Bill Virgin
For the past three years, a curious feature has been added to the landscape of Washington: the subdivision with no houses. Streets, cul-de-sacs, curbs with cutouts for driveways, light posts, utility boxesall the features of a standard suburban housing development would be in place, except for the houses. Or perhaps one house, standing by its…
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
Erik Smith
Back in 1989, then House Speaker Joe King summoned reporters to his office at the state Capitol building to announce one of the proudest accomplishments of that years Legislature. The problems with the states public employee pension system had finally been solved. During the next 35 years, the state was going to catch up with…
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
Leslie D. Helm
Growing Up: I had a wonderful father who would keep me thinking. He taught calculus at the community college in Alberta. It was cold there. Me and my mother had to take care of the cows. We did all the feeding by hand. Once, as a freshman in high school, I tripped over a frozen…
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
Julia Anderson
Despite high retail and office vacancy rates in the Portland-Vancouver metro area, developer Barry Cain is confident that the timing is right for new construction at a 32-acre site along Vancouvers Columbia River waterfront. Cains Gramor Development Inc. of Tualatin, Ore., in partnership with a group of private investors, envisions a mix of office, retail…
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
Elizabeth Padilla
Harbor Wing Technologies has built a sailboat like no other (except maybe Jack Sparrows Black Pearl). It has no crew. Instead, the vessel with a computer-controlled sail, called a WingSail, is preprogrammed or operated remotely, making it well suited for everything from monitoring enemy submarine activity to tracking endangered marine mammals to intercepting drug traffickers….
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
R.L. Nave
PCSI Design, an industrial design and engineering firm headquartered in Bothell, was recently hired by Seattle Lighthouse for the Blind to design a hardy, long-lasting easel that could be set up with one hand and was made from 60 percent recycled plastic. The job sounded like a win-win for everyone. It would satisfy the strong…
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
Tim Newcomb
Photograph by Clinton James Fans of the flame-kissed pizza at Tom Douglas Serious Pie and Joe Fugeres Tutta Bella Neapolitan may be surprised to discover that the authentic Old World taste comes not from some venerable imported Italian oven but from a specialty oven manufactured in Bellingham. In the past two decades, Wood Stones wood-…
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
Paul Freeman
Photograph by Rajah Bose Though home to several technology firms, Spokane is light-years away from being a Silicon Valley or a North Carolina Research Triangle or a Boston Route 128. But Washington states second-largest city does have something those hotbeds of intellectual property do not have: the nations No. 1 patent law firm overall in…
- April 2011
March 14, 2011
Glenn J. Amster
Sponsored Legal Report Two years ago in this column I urged our state legislators to seize the opportunity created by economic conditions at the time to authorize local governments to use increment financing to stimulate economic development. Unfortunately, the bill that emerged from the 2009 legislative session was less than useful, in part because of…
- April 2011