New and Upcoming Retail in Area is a Sign of Confidence for our Future

If you take a drive through the downtown areas of Redmond or Woodinville, it it easy to see that some good changes are dotting the local landscaping.

Woodinvlle has recently been favored with the opening of the new Ross Dress for Less Store, which has taken the space left vacant by the end of the Linens and Things era.  Far across the parking lot it can be readily noticed and a great asset to the downtown Woodinville area. It is wonderful to see the bright lights and colored contour repacing what has been a dark, lonely empty space.

If you are in a mood for warm and soft bakery item you will enjoy walking in to the new Mrs. Fields, located next to the new TCBY, which can help quench those summer cravings.

Moving into the old Blockbuster Video space we will soon enjoy the ambiance and convenience of the upcoming Panera Bread and just across the parking lot, where the Ruby's Diner
 used to be, will  once again be vibrant and busy as the Big Fish Grill moves into town.

A few miles to the south in the city of Redmond, change has also been blossoming. A few months ago, Designer Shoe Warehouse opened in Bear Creek Village and if you like shoes, you should give this store a try. Bear Creek Village is bursting at the seams right now with new construction and great enhancing change. Soon to open will be a Ross Dress for Less, in most of the space provided by the old Linens and Things vacancy there. The remaining space will be taken by a national cosmetic store.  Where Las Margaritas has been a long time fixture, will soon be the new Agave Cocina & Cantina, a more diverse and healthier menu choice, for those loving the culinary arts of  Mexican  cuisine.

Redmond Town Center has just received two new additions for the creative home decorator, Z Gallerie and Chairs & Trellis, located on the south side of the shopping center.  When you have some free time take a stroll through these new stores and enjoy the flavor they have to offer.

Besides having several new opportunities for shopping and dining within just minutes, all these changes are making a positive statement about what these companies think of the areas and our future.  Great attention to detail is given by each company as extensive research is done prior to lease negotiations. This is a reinforcement of a future for our area that shines brightly.  Each of these establishments offers employment opportunities and adds to the diversity and livability of both communities.

Let's face it, sometimes change is not only good - it's great!

Seattle makes "Top 10 Cities for the Next Decade"

10 Best Cities for the Next Decade

They're prosperous, innovative, and they'll generate plenty of jobs, too.

From Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, July 2010

 

We live in challenging times. Unemployment remains high, and the U.S. lead in technology and science is slipping as many foreign countries gain ground. But some U.S. cities, though slowed by the Great Recession, still thrive by lifting good old American innovation to new levels. And that will help put more Americans back to work and keep our international edge.

In Kiplinger's latest search for top cities, we focused on places that specialize in out-of-the-box thinking. "New ideas generate new businesses," says Kevin Stolarick, our numbers guru, who this year evaluated U.S. cities for growth and growth potential. Stolarick is research director at the Martin Prosperity Institute, a think tank that studies economic prosperity. "In the places where innovation works, it really works," he says.

After researching and visiting our 2010 Best Cities, it became clear that the innovation factor has three elements. Mark Emmert, president of the University of Washington in Seattle, put his finger on two of them: smart people and great ideas. But we'd argue that it's the third element -- collaboration -- that really supercharges a city's economic engine. When governments, universities and business communities work together, the economic vitality is impressive.

And it's no coincidence that economic vitality and livability go hand in hand. Creativity in music, arts and culture, plus neighborhoods and recreational facilities that rank high for "coolness," attract like-minded professionals who go on to cultivate a region's business scene. All of which make our 2010 Best Cities not just great places to live but also great places to start a business or find a job.

1. Austin, Tex.
Austin is arguably the the country's best crucible for small business, offering a dozen community programs that form a neural network of business brainpower to help entrepreneurs. Now overlay that net with a dozen venture-capital funds and 20 or so business associations, plus incubators, educational opportunities and networking events. Mix all these elements in what many call a classless society, where hippie communalism coexists with no-nonsense capitalism, and you’ve got a breeding ground for start-ups.
Don’t discount the fun factor: In the self-proclaimed live-music capital of the world, music and business creativity riff off one another. The city’s famous South by Southwest festival, where concerts, independent film screenings and emerging technology overlap, is a prime example.

2. Seattle, Wash.
Rain City? We'd say Brain City. Home to a well-educated workforce, a world-class research university, über innovators Microsoft, Amazon and Boeing, and a host of risk-taking, garage-tinkering entrepreneurs, Seattle crackles with creative energy. "We only have two products here: smart people and great ideas," says Mark Emmert, president of the University of Washington.

3. Washington, D.C.
Every tourist knows postcard D.C., the city that is home to the White House, the Capitol and all those free Smithsonian museums. But those who live in D.C. know better. The region is chock-full of job prospects, entertainment venues and great neighborhoods, and it is booming. Eleven of the 25 richest counties in the U.S. are located in the region, which also boasts a low unemployment rate.

4. Boulder, Colo.
Boulder is a wealthy, intellectual hot spot where environmental and scientific ideas blossom into businesses. Three economic drivers power Boulder: the University of Colorado, federal research laboratories and more than 6,600 small businesses and corporations, all woven into an entrepreneurial fabric. The city is also a mecca for those seeking healthy, active lifestyles.

5. Salt Lake City, Utah
You can’t beat the cost of living and doing business in Salt Lake City. Utah has relatively low wages, taxes and operating costs. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that “our offices are 15 minutes away from four ski resorts,” says one local employer.

6. Rochester, Minn.
Rochester is built on the world-renowned Mayo Clinic’s rock-solid foundation, and, in return, the community serves as great hosts and hostesses to 2.7 million visitors each year (many of them Mayo patients). Synergy among the city’s resources has been well cultivated and is paying dividends. Rochester opened the Minnesota BioBusiness Center in spring 2009 -- providing room to grow in the form of 150,000 feet of office space. The center, located a block from both the Mayo Clinic and the university, represents the city’s aspiration to build an even stronger bioscience and medical-research community. “If there’s a theme to what we’re doing here, it’s collaboration. . ."

7. Des Moines, Iowa
There’s more to Des Moines than agricultural jobs. A likely worker shortage sparked by retiring baby-boomers has lit a fire under Des Moines’s civic leaders. The city is working to lure back young Iowans and attracting global talent by developing its downtown and promoting the jobs available in the many industries that flourish there. Other big draws: low-cost housing, plus the city’s long-touted reputation for family-friendliness and a “19-minute commute.”

8. Burlington, Vt.
Burlington's local-food movement perhaps best tells the story of how environmentalism drives much of the city's economic growth. Many shops and restaurants along Burlington’s Church Street Marketplace, the famous pedestrian mall, serve up local goodies. A couple blocks over, the City Market/Onion River Co-Op, a community-owned grocery store, offers more than 1,000 Vermont products. (And atop the supermarket, generating 3% of the Co-Op’s energy needs -- enough electricity to power six Burlington homes -- are 136 solar panels from groSolar, another Vermont-based company.) And the crown jewel for locavores: The Intervale Center is a nonprofit organization that has managed 350 acres of family-owned farmland in Burlington since 1988 and provides 10% of the town’s food. "We’re 30 years ahead of the country with the local-food movement. . ."

9. West Hartford, Conn.
Community is key in West Hartford, a place where you actually know your neighbors. But this once-sleepy suburb of Connecticut’s capital is not content to be merely an idyllic place to live and raise a family (it is, by the way). West Hartford made our list because it is transforming itself from a suburb into a destination -- in this case, a regional destination for shopping and dining. Small business is the new game in town, and everyone is playing.

10. Topeka, Kan.
In its reserved, midwestern way, Topeka has engineered a prosperity that most cities of similar size would envy. As the capital city of Kansas, nearly 25% of Topeka’s workforce is employed by the government, providing a stable job market where unemployment has stayed around 7%. The city boasts quality schools, friendly people, good hospitals, a university and -- one of its biggest selling points -- low housing costs.

Read more: http://www.kiplinger.com/magazine/archives/10-best-cities-2010-for-the-next-decade.html#ixzz1H1JK0Crd
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Another Positive for the Seattle Job Market!

Amazon.com on a hiring spree

It's tough times all around, just not at Amazon's new headquarters in the South Lake Union area of Seattle.
Young workers dressed in jeans and T-shirts type away on laptops in small conference rooms named after products sold on Amazon's website. Vending machines serve up pricey gluten-free cookies and dry-roasted edamame. And for their pooches, doggy biscuits are handed out at the main reception desk.

Amid a sluggish job market and shaky economic recovery, the world's biggest Internet retailer is hiring like crazy at its headquarters complex. Consider Amazon's online jobs board: It lists about 1,900 openings in Seattle, at least twice as many as a year ago. More than 900 call for techies.

"We're looking for very talented software developers," said Susan Harker, director of global talent acquisition at Amazon. Other openings call for recruiters, product managers, salespeople, graphic designers and supply-chain analysts.

While some openings came about because of employee departures, most are new additions to help Amazon get bigger, Harker said. "We hired a lot last year, and we're going to hire a lot this year," she said.
Amazon's expansion in and around South Lake Union is a surefire sign that the Internet giant has hit a major growth spurt.

Amazon began moving into its headquarters complex last spring and now occupies seven buildings covering 845,000 square feet. But it's not yet done
.
Amazon, which went public in 1997 and made its first annual profit in 2003, has long-term leases with Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate for a total of 1.7 million square feet, including four buildings still to come.
What's more, Amazon occupies a big chunk of Vulcan's 2201 Westlake nearby and soon will take most of Schnitzer West's 1918 Eighth Avenue in the Denny Triangle neighborhood.

In a widely anticipated move, Amazon said last week it signed a long-term lease for about 460,000 square feet of office space at the new Schnitzer building.

Despite a global economic downturn, Amazon nearly doubled its annual profit in the past three years to $1.15 billion. Last year it had sales of more than $34 billion, up from $19 billion in 2008. Its stock is up a third from a year ago to $172 a share.

What gives? Analysts cite a range of factors, from the company's late-2009 purchase of shoe and apparel website Zappos.com, to the rise of its Kindle e-reader, to Amazon Web Services, which rents out computing power to other organizations.

Worldwide, Amazon had 33,700 employees at the end of 2010, about 9,400 more than at the end of the previous year.

It won't say exactly how many people it employs in Seattle, only that there are thousands. Some still work elsewhere in Seattle, including the Pac-Med building on Beacon Hill, but all are expected to move to Amazon's new offices by late December.

The arrival of thousands of Amazonians to South Lake Union has been great for some neighbor businesses like Blue Moon Burgers.

"We were dead in the water for a year and a half before Amazon started moving in last April. And by June or July, we thought we were maxed out on what we could do," said general manager Nils Petersen. "But I figured out new ways to get people in and out the door faster, and my staff has pretty much doubled."

Petersen, who believes the company has nearly 6,000 employees in South Lake Union, is preparing for even more Amazonians. "I'm looking at increasing my staff because I've heard Amazon has about 4,000 employees set to move in between April and June," he said.

Petersen's estimates are in line with the number of employees that Amazon's new offices could easily accommodate. As a rule of thumb, real-estate brokers figure there's one employee for every 200 square feet of office space.

Amazon's growth spurt also is good for local techies.
Technology blogger Matt Rosoff, of BusinessInsider.com, notes that tech job listings in Seattle are up 47 percent since last March. That puts Seattle's tech job market ahead of Austin, Texas, which is up 44 percent, and Silicon Valley, up 41 percent, said Rosoff, citing statistics from job-hunting site Dice.

Besides Amazon, Microsoft is adding to its payrolls again after eliminating about 5,000 jobs during the recession. Google is hiring at its Fremont and Kirkland offices. Facebook has set up a Seattle outpost. And Salesforce.com is actively looking to staff a new Seattle office near Amazon's headquarters.

"Amazon is in a pitched battle with these companies for tech talent," said Glenn Kelman, chief executive of online real-estate brokerage Redfin, a 200-person firm based in Seattle. Still, Amazon remains "very disciplined" when it comes to pay and benefits, he said.

"They offer lucrative packages with equity at a company that's growing," he said. "But I don't think Amazon has been drawn into the break-all-the-rules, stop-at-nothing knife fight that I'd say Google and Facebook are engaged in for top tech talent."

While Amazon would not give details about its pay packages, many new Amazon hires receive two years of bonuses and stock that vests over four years, said Jeff Hibbert, managing partner at Seattle executive-search firm Laurel Group. Historically, he said, Amazon is known to pay a "slightly lower base salary" than such companies as Google and Microsoft.

"But it more than makes up for that with bonuses and restricted stock units," he added.
Then, there's Amazon's internal motto: "Work hard. Have Fun. Make History."
"They've changed the way people buy and read books," Hibbert said. "Many technologists are attracted to Amazon because it's a disruptive company."

Amy Martinez: 206-464-2923 or amartinez@seattletimes.com

Nation's Unemployment Rate Drops Below 9%

The national unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent in February, as employers added 192,000 jobs to their payrolls, according to figures released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor. The rate is down from 9.0 percent in January and 9.4 percent as recently as December.

The Labor Department described the latest numbers as “little changed,” noting that the number of unemployed persons – 13.7 million – was reported as virtually the same as in the previous month. Of these, 43.9 percent had been jobless for 27 weeks or more, essentially the same as in the month prior.

In February, the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 64.2 percent, although January’s figures were revised upward to reflect a net gain of 63,000 jobs instead of the 36,000 initially reported. December’s job growth was also adjusted upward, from 121,000 net jobs to 152,000.

“Most measures from the survey of households showed little movement in February,” said Keith Hall, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  However, the 192,000 jobs that were added in February represented the largest monthly net gain since mid-2010 when the numbers included temporary Census hiring, signaling that the economy is showing signs of strengthening.

Hall says from its recent low point in February of last year, payroll employment has increased by 1.3 million. But as Catherine Rampell with the New York Times points out, since the downturn began in December 2007, the economy has shed, on net, 7.5 million jobs.

If the United States adds 200,000 jobs a month from here on out, Rampell explained, it will take more than three years for the economy to return to pre-recession employment levels.February’s job growth came close to analysts’ expectations. The consensus among economists polled by Bloomberg was that the report would show 196,000 new jobs last month.

“The 192,000 increase in US non-farm payrolls in February is healthy enough, particularly when we take into account the upward revisions to the preceding two months,” said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist for the international research firm Capital Economics.

“Over the next few months, we expect monthly payroll gains to accelerate a little from the current underlying pace of about 135,000 a month, moving into the 150,000 to 200,000 range. However, we expect the unemployment rate to decline only gradually from here,” Ashworth said.

Without question, unemployment levels are now closely tied to the mortgage industry’s level of delinquencies. To address this indisputable link, Congress established the Emergency Mortgage Relief Fund when it enacted the Dodd-Frank Reform Act last summer. The program provides homeowners who’ve lost their jobs with a declining balance, deferred payment “bridge loan” of up to $50,000 to cover past due mortgage expenses, plus up to 24 months of monthly mortgage payments while the borrower searches for new employment.

The House Financial Services Committee voted Thursday to terminate the emergency program, citing it as one of four federal foreclosure mitigation programs that “aren’t working.” The bill to end the program now moves to the full House for consideration. If passed by House lawmakers, it would also need to clear the Senate.

By: Carrie Bay DSNEWS.com  posted 03/04/2011

On hiring spree, Google expands in Seattle and Kirkland

Posted by

 

"I do expect, given what we're seeing in terms of resumes and the amount of resources we're putting into the hiring process, that we will grow substantially in 2011," Bershad said.

Google is expecting 2011 to be the biggest hiring year in its history, and the "Sea-Kirk" facilities should get their share.

"In this area we've always grown faster than the rest of Google, always, every year," said Silver. "It's mostly a testament to the talent that are here."

Google is working on a number of projects in the local offices, including search, messaging, maps, ad systems and the Chrome browser and operating system. Bershad said a particular emphasis in recruting this year will be for user-experience experts, to improve the design of Google products.

Unlike most of Google's regional offices, the Seattle and Kirkland facilities are almost entirely filled with engineers, with more than 90 percent of the staff involved in research and development, as opposed to sales and administration.

Google's engineering presence in Seattle began in 2004 with three employees in Kirkland. The company leased the three-building Kirkland campus while it was under construction in 2007 and moved into two of the buildings in 2009. Silver said Google will eventually fill the third building, which has about 75,000 square feet of space.

Among the occupants may be former employees of Widevine, a Seattle digital-rights management software company that Google acquired in December. At the time, plans were to move the 60 Widevine employees to the Kirkland campus.

To accommodate new employees that it expects to hire this year, Google is expanding its offices in Seattle and Kirkland. The company's been talking up its growth plan over the past month, saying it expects to add more than 6,000 employees this year globally.

After that news came out, Google received a record 75,000 resumes in a single week. Locally, applications to the Seattle and Kirkland offices jumped 62 percent above the weekly average.

Google's hiring talk comes as tech companies large and small ramp up their hiring after running lean through the downturn. The situation is exacerbated in Seattle by Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook, Zynga and Salesforce.com setting up new engineering offices here.

Competition for top talent is leading to dot-commish hiring gimmicks, including referral bounties of $10,000 to $12,000 being offered by Seattle startups SEOmoz and EnergySavvy.

Seattle and Kirkland Google managers wouldn't talk about competing for talent with any particular company, but in a meeting today they emphasized the thoroughness and responsiveness of Google's hiring practices.

Google is expanding its Fremont campus by leasing 30,000 square feet formerly occupied by Getty Images, adjacent to Google's building just north of the Fremont Bridge.

In Kirkland, Google began moving employees into the third building on the campus it opened in 2009. Combined employment at the two sites grew 50 percent last year, to about 800 people, according to site managers Brian Bershad and Scott Silver.

Google's likely to hire more than 100 this year,but the managers wouldn't provide specific forecasts. However, they offered plenty of clues and hints to inform speculation about what to expect.

Brier Dudley

Boeing to add 1,200 jobs in Renton

By Dominic Gates

Seattle Times aerospace reporter

Boeing said Tuesday that employment at its Renton 737 plant will swell by roughly 1,200 over the next couple of years as it boosts production of the single-aisle jets.

That figure will include employees transfering from other Boeing sites as well as new hires.

Spokeswoman Liz Verdier said the company will also expand an existing building on the Renton site, adding 75,000 square feet that will be used to store equipment such as seats and inflight entertainment systems supplied by vendors and installed near the end of the assembly process.

Boeing currently rolls out 31.5 jets a month from Renton. In January 2012, that will jump to 35 a month and in the spring of 2013 it will rise again to 38 a month. The jobs boost will come in two phases of about 600 people, months in advance of each of the production rate increases.

According to the latest data the company provided to the state, at the end of 2009 Boeing employed 10,400 people in Renton.

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