Today in Tempe, Ariz., city officials announced that two private developers will build a $600 million mixed-use complex that will be anchored by State Farm.

According to a report in the East Valley Tribune’s online edition, Ryan Companies US, Inc. and Sunbelt Holdings will develop a site owned by Arizone State University near Tempe Town Lake. The deal is subject to City Council approval of development agreement details in the coming month. (I wonder what the chances are of that agreement not getting approved.)

More details from the Tribune:

The Marina Heights project in Tempe will be the largest office

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The Tacoma Housing Authority took a major step this week in advancing  the rebirth of the former Salishan public housing project on Tacoma’s Eastside as a major mixed-use housing development.

The authority sold 143 lots in Area Three  of the former World War II housing development to the nation’s largest homebuilder,  D.R. Horton.  Horton is expected to begin building single-family homes on the lots this summer.

Those homes, most of them with three or four bedrooms, are likely to be priced at market rates between $180,000 and $250,000, said Michael Mirra, the housing authority’s executive director. A few with views …

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The Port of Tacoma’s container traffic numbers, a key measurement of the port’s prosperity, have jumped by nearly 35 percent in 2012′s first four months, new figures from the port show.

The port’s terminals handled 617,076 container units through April.  That compares with 458, 477 in 2012.

Much of the credit for those bigger numbers goes to the Grand Alliance, a consortium of four shipping lines that moved to the Port of Tacoma from the Port of Seattle last July.  The four container lines, NYK, OOCL, Hapag-Lloyd and Zim, share ships and capacity in the transPacific container trade.

For April, …

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Real estate analytics firm CoreLogic reports today that more homes in Tacoma were in some stage of foreclosure in March than at the same time a year ago.

The trend is the same statewide, CoreLogic reports, while the opposite is happening nationally. Across the country, foreclosures are decreasing. That is the same trend reported earlier this month by RealtyTrac, another leading analytics firm.

The state lags the nation in working through foreclosures because it passed a law in 2011 that required mediation before the foreclosure could be completed. That was an attempt to ensure each homeowner had a chance to …

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Delta Air Lines, which recently began flying three times daily between Sea-Tac and Los Angeles International Airport, is increasing the frequency of its flights next fall.

The Atlanta-based airline will fly five times daily between the two cities using 90-passenger regional jets operated by Skywest.   The route is one of Sea-Tac-based Alaska Airlines’ most highly patronized routes.

Alaska flies 12 times daily between Sea-Tac and LAX using larger Boeing 737 jets. Alaska has 55 percent of the market share on the route. Delta code-shares with Alaska on Alaska’s flights from LA.

Two other airlines already compete for passengers to LA, …

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A breakup of the partnership that operated two Big Whisky Saloons will force closure of the country and rock bar’s Tacoma branch three years after it opened.

The bar at 100 S. Ninth St. will hold a weekend-long farewell event May 30 through June 1.  Big Whisky Saloon’s Olympia location will remain open. That location opened in 2011.

“Unfortunately, our partnership was unable to come to terms on continuing the Big Whisky brand in our Tacoma location,” said Paul Muller, one of the bar’s co-owners. Muller said the partnership split is “mutual and amicable.”

Roger Rahil, co-owner of both Big Whisky Saloon …

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SiteCrafting, a 15-year-old Tacoma-based Web design and application development company, has been honored as one of America’s top inner-city firms by The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City  and Fortune magazine.

This year is the third year Sitecrafting was named to the select list of fast-growing urban companies.

The Inner City 100 program recognizes successful inner city companies and their chief executives  as role models for entrepreneurship, innovative business practices and job creation in America’s urban communities, the initiative said.

SiteCrafting reported 2011 revenues of $2.1 million and an annual growth rate of 20 percent. It was ranked 66th on …

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Sea-Tac’s Alaska Airlines hasn’t yet canceled any flights because of  activity at two Alaska volcanoes, the Sea-Tac-based airline said today.

But a regional Alaska airline, Pen Air, which operates flights from Anchorage to Dutch Harbor for Alaska, canceled six flights Monday and two flights Tuesday because of eruptions from Mount Pavlof near Cold Bay, Alaska.  That mountain as well as Mount Cleveland located west of Dutch Harbor have been spewing ash this week.

Both Alaska Airlines and Pen Air said today they’re closing monitoring eruption information.  Service to Bethel, Adak and Dutch Harbor could be affected by further eruptions.