Tom Sowa

Sean Green, the Spokane resident and first person in Washington to get a legal pot-growing license, said he’s ready to sell out and try to make money as a pot-business consultant. Green, 32, is among several dozen pot pioneers with approved marijuana licenses who already want to sell those licenses.

If the Spokane home market is a tad soft, it’s because there aren’t enough first-time homebuyers like Joe Weber and Alicia Isensee. The two area residents are closing on home purchases. For each, it’s a chance to stop renting and build some home equity.

When the World Cup started last month, the little blue lights on thousands of racks inside Yahoo’s Quincy data center began flickering faster than usual.  Millions of people on phones, tablets and computers were tracking teams and watching video from the event, a once-every-four-years sports spectacle that garners intense online interest.

Like most major events, Hoopfest owes its silver-plated success to good luck, persistence and the good fortune of following a bona fide example – in its case, Bloomsday – say people who’ve nurtured Spokane’s 3-on-3 annual downtown hoops avalanche. Hoopfest’s two founders asked Terry Kelly for help to get the city’s first-ever basketball tournament off to a good start 24 years ago. Kelly, a Gonzaga Prep and Washington State University hoops star, had doubts. Spokane and North Idaho just didn’t have enough dedicated players and fans to make Hoopfest a success, he told them.

City officials have blocked off sidewalks around the old Otis Hotel in downtown Spokane, keeping out transients and others who have used the long-vacant building as a gathering spot or temporary home. The immediate objective was to block access to the sidewalk vaults alongside the building, said Jan Quintrall, the city’s director of business and development services.

People buying e-cigarettes generally think they’re getting a product much safer than regular tobacco. But there needs to be more research on whether “vaping” is as safe as the people selling the product claim, said Donelle Howell, a public health researcher at Washington State University Spokane who has spent the past three years researching e-cigarettes.

Owners of a prominent business center say the long delay in finishing the North Spokane Corridor has cost them millions. But the claim made in a lawsuit by the owners of nine office buildings and the Wolf Creek Lodge restaurant at the Tapio Office Center, 104 S. Freya St., was rejected Wednesday by Spokane County Superior Court Judge Maryann Moreno.

Companies around the globe are creating apps that allow users to shop, play games, connect, manage bank accounts, share photos or watch videos on their mobile devices. Kochava, a Sandpoint company launched in 2011, is a fast-growing provider of a key part of that app-driven economy: It tells companies and advertisers how many people download apps, and then what they do with them afterward.

Alan Curryer, 59, is the CEO of Rockwood Retirement Communities. The nonprofit group, operated by Spokane United Methodist Homes, manages senior living properties at its Rockwood at Hawthorne; at its much larger Rockwood on the South Hill facilities; and at its new affordable senior community, Appleway Court. It’s in the middle of building the Summit, on its South Hill campus. This expansion, its largest, is scheduled to open in 2016.