Spokane-area businesses will be hit with health-plan rate hikes again this year to no ones surprise, but the storm clouds meager silver lining is that the increases will be smaller in some cases than in 1998.Representatives of some of the 4

The downtown Metro Block, mostly vacated last year by Spokane-based Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co., is to be renovated into a creative business incubator that would seek to attract artists, writers, designers, and some high-tech to a is

Calvert Technologies Inc., a West Plains control panel manufacturer that expanded into electronic jail systems late last year after buying a division of Telect Inc., of Liberty Lake, says it plans to develop a new manufacturing plant in Airway and

As Hamilton Photography & Film Co. points out in its brochure, anybody can point a camera and snap a picture. Its the simple chemistry of light on film.Great photography or cinematography, the company suggests, begins with an artists vision.

Brothers Dave and Kevin Guthrie, who both are vice presidents of Pacific Security Cos., of Spokane, have closed Birdies Golf Center, a 3-year-old, 17-acre golf practice facility they developed east of Northpointe Plaza shopping center.They plan

U.S. Bankruptcy Court trustee Jack R. Reeves has filed a motion seeking to have the Mars Hotel & Casino property, which includes a building and an adjacent annex at the northwest corner of Sprague and Bernard downtown, declared abandoned.The for

Firms that provide professional and insurance services to international customers are being given added incentive to locate or expand here.The Spokane City Council this week designated 20 census tracts in the city where such concerns will be to

In an age when retail music sales have been taken over mostly by megastores, mail-order vendors, and Internet conglomerates, walking into Little Nells Records, at 711 N. Monroe, is like stepping backward in time.What decade you feel like been

Dennis Wheeler, chairman, president, and CEO of Coeur dAlene Mines Corp., exudes the calm confidence of a business executive who has been tested by fire and has learned how to dodge the flames.In an industry where low metals prices have and to

Spokane is turning into a test bed of competition for digital wireless communications as the latest in a string of national and regional service providers scurry to set up networks and establish customer bases here.Five carriersAT&T Wireless,