The minimum wage in Washington state will increase to $9.47 an hour beginning Jan. 1, up 15 cents from the current hourly rate, the Washington state Department of Labor and Industries announced today. The change reflects a 1.59 percent increase in the

An investor has bought one of two downtown buildings collectively known as the Spokane Entrepreneurial Center, and a commercial real estate broker involved in the transaction says he expects to close a sale shortly in which another investor plans to buy t

The Spokane Home Builders Association will hold its 10th annual Fall Festival of Homes during the next two three-day weekends. This year's festival will feature 36 homes constructed by 17 Spokane-area builders.

An old railroad right-of-way is being converted into a bicycle-and-pedestrian path in Spokane Valley, to be called Appleway Trail. Construction started late this summer, and by the end of the year-weather permitting-bicyclists, rollerbladers, dog walk

Initiative 1351, which would reduce K-12 class sizes in Washington and is one of three statewide propositions on the upcoming general election ballot, is an unfunded mandate that simply would cost too much to implement, particularly given that its educati

The Spokane Area Workforce Development Council has received $3.2 million-down $150,000 from last year-in state workforce development money for the summer-2014-to-summer-2015 funding period. The reduced funding isn't necessarily a bad thing, though,

IntelliPaper LLC, the Edwall, Wash.-based company that makes recyclable, paper-based USB flash drives, has raised more than 10 times its goal of $10,000 through a recently completed Kickstarter crowdsourcing campaign for swivelCard, a 'smart” business

Spokane medical benefit broker VEBA Service Group is planning to open a call center division here on Jan. 1, says Mark Wilkerson, area president for VEBA. The company, located in 8,400 square feet of space at 906 W. Second downtown, will be hiring six c