The Puyallup Tribe of Indians and SSA Marine Inc. today announced an agreement to develop 180 acres into a new marine terminal at the Port of Tacoma. The terminal will be built along the Blair Waterway where the tribe once operated its original Emerald Queen Casino.

Other tribal land, which now stands empty, will be used along with SSA-owned land as as a marshaling yard and storage area for containers.

SSA Marine will transfer to the tribe 52 acres as part of the deal, and will operate the terminal under a lease agreement. The company will also

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Tacoma-based Labor Ready acquired Skilled Services Corporation, a skilled construction trades staffing company, the company announced today. SSC has 21 locations around the country.

Labor Ready paid about $25.5 million for the Florida-based company.

The Tacoma staffing company first entered the skilled construction trades market in 2005 with its purchase of CLP Resources.

CLP has since seen significant growth, adding 21 branches to the 51 that Labor Ready purchased.

Steve Cooper, Labor Ready CEO, said SSC’s management team will stay in place. SSC President Mark Curtiss will head the SSC operations and report

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The preliminary groundbreaking date for a new boutique hotel on Tacoma’s near-downtown Foss Waterway has now slipped from May to mid-June.

There’s been no official announcement, but that’s the best educated guess from Don Meyer, the head of the Thea Foss Waterway Development Authority, which owns the land where the combination hotel and condominium project will be built.

The new hotel, repeatedly delayed while the potential developers redesigned the project to make it pencil out financially, will serve a higher end market than the existing major hotels downtown, the Sheraton and the Marriott Courtyard with its waterfront location.

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Bill Boyer, a former Alaska Airlines baggage handler and Lakewood espresso stand entrepreneur who now owns Hawaii’s Mokulele Airlines, says his growing airline has a new financial angel.

Dorvin Leis, head of Hawaii’s largest mechanical construction firm, has invested several million dollars in Boyer’s commuter airline, the airline said Monday.

Boyer made his fortune by inventing and marketing a portable digital movie player for the transportation industry. Boyer sold his digEplayer to a Salt Lake City firm and bought Mokulele.

That airline, now has a deal to serve as a feeder airline for a new Hawaiian

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A new and improved Tacoma Mall is on the way. And it started today with the demolition of the former Mervyns store at the west side of the shopping center to make room for a new Nordstrom.

The demolition is projected to take about a month. Once the building is down, the mall will begin constructing a two-story, 144,000-square-foot Nordstrom that is scheduled to open in the fall of 2008.

The current Nordstrom store will be turned into a lifestyle center that will include restaurants and shops.

Tacoma’s Downtown Merchants Group will introduce a new map of businesses at its meeting next week.

The map highlights 575 Tacoma businesses and enlarges the downtown footprint to include parts of the Stadium and Dome districts.

The Downtown Merchants Group has produced 160,000 of these maps, which will be available various stores and restaurants.

The merchants group will celebrate the map and unveil its new logo at its meeting from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Thursday at the Pantages Theater.

The Foss Waterway Seaport has received a $50,000 grant from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Foundation and $25,000 from KeyBank in support of the Seaport’s waterfront education, cultural and activity center.

These grants kick off the second phase of the Seaport’s capital campaign that has a goal of raising $5 million in cash and pledges by the end of 2008. This follows a first phase effort that raised $3.7 million.

KeyBank’s contribution is the first major support for the Seaport from a major financial institution. The bank’s gift will be used to support the Seaport’s Balfour

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By now Century Tel’s free Wi-Fi network in Steilacoom is officially open for business. Some of you may even be reading this blog over that network.

The Steilacoom network’s ceremonial debut was scheduled for 11 a.m. today, though most of the network had been unofficially available for weeks.

The free wireless Internet cloud over the town is an experiment to test the technical and marketing possibilities of digital communication that eventually could expand to cover much of Pierce County.

The 60-day trial will offer residents and visitors a taste of wireless Internet access throughout the town.

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