Retailers in downtown Seattle’s premier shopping street have little to complain about compared with their peers in other tony shopping district around the world.

A new study by global real estate firm Colliers International comparing retail space rents in well-known shopping districts in dozens of cities throughout the world, shows Seattle’s retail rents are on the reasonable end of the spectrum.

The study shows Seattle Fifth Avenue rents average $40 a square foot annually. That’s less than three percent of the rental rates on Fifth Avenue’s New York namesake, the most expensive retail street on the globe.

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Port of Tacoma Commissioner Dick Marzano recently announced that he plans to run again for his seat.

The five-person port commission has three seats up for election this year.

Marzano was first elected to the commission in 1995. He has been re-elected two times since.

“I believe my experience on the commission and working my entire adult life on the waterfront will help in the problems we face,” Marzano said in an e-mail to The News Tribune.

Marzano has worked as a longshoreman for almost four decades.

He is also former

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Wildlife officials will remove young Red-tailed hawks from nests near Sea-Tac Airport Wednesday in an effort to keep the birds and jetliners from colliding.

The young hawks will be re-introduced to other territories in northern Washington, far from the airport.

The airport has successfully relocated more than 200 raptors since 2001. Only one pair of the tagged hawks eventually returned to the airport.

Six pairs of adult hawks live in the airport vicinity, but the airport allows them to stay because they’ve learned to stay away from the incoming and outgoing planes.

Having resident hawks in

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Three of four Boeing 767-based aerial tankers have become operational in Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force, Boeing announced today.

The three tankers mark a milestone for Boeing which has struggled to get the new tankers into service. A fourth tanker will join the Japanese forces soon.

The Japanese tankers are somewhat similar to the 767 tankers that Boeing hopes to sell to the U.S. Air Force.

Boeing is also building 767 tankers for the Italian Air Force. The tankers are a derivative of the 767 twin-jet Boeing supplies to commercial airlines.

Boeing and its European rival, Airbus,

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A national home price tracking index says home sales prices declined by more than 22 percent in March in the Puget Sound area from year-earlier prices.

The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index released today said home prices nationwide dropped 19.21 percent in that same period.

In the Puget Sound area, those March figures were the twelfth month in a row prices fell.

The decline here, according to the index, began in July 2007 and dropped in 19 of the 20 months since then.

The Puget Sound area index stood at 149.03 in March.

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In this economy, the endurance and strategies necessary to find a job can wear you down. So, Paul Anderson, a career psychology consultant with ProLango Consulting, Inc., will present a free job search and networking seminar Wednesday.

The seminar begins at 1:30 p.m. at Blue Water Business Center,

3323 Pacific Ave. in Tacoma. Space is limited. To reserve your place, RSVP to Jane Milhans, jane_milhans@yahoo.com, 253-279-4245 or

Joanna Felt, joannafelt@hotmail.com, 253-222-3510.

Sponsoring Anderson’s presentation is A Future and a Hope Networking Group, which meets at 9 a.m. Mondays, for support, prayer, networking and

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Looks like they got it right.

The Employment Security Department said today in a release that a large majority of unemployment benefits were paid accurately in 2008.

A federally required internal audit sampled 480 out of 319,440 unemployment claims that were paid in 2008, the release said, and the results indicated that 88.6 percent were paid accurately. The audit found that excess benefits were paid in 11.4 percent of the reviewed claims.

Most overpayments were due to inaccurate information received from claimants, the department said. Common issues involved claimants who were not meeting the weekly work-search requirements;

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A week after publicly announcing his candidacy, former Tacoma Mayor Brian Ebersole has said he will not be a candidate for the open seat on the Port of Tacoma Commission.

I spoke with Ebersole last night at the World Trade Center Tacoma awards banquet, and he said he would switch his support to candidate Don Meyer, current head of the Foss Waterway Authority.

Along with being mayor, Ebersole has served as a speaker of the state House and as president of Bates Technical College.

"I didn’t know when I announced that Don Meyer, a friend,

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