Business in brief

Retail sales grow 7.9 percent

Spending was strong in Spokane and Spokane County last year, according to retail sales figures released by the state.

Spokane County’s taxable retail sales totaled $6.7 billion last year, up 7.9 percent from the previous year. Retail trade, a figure that better represents consumer buying because it doesn’t include construction services, rose 5.9 percent, to $3.3 billion, the state said.

Taxable retail sales inside Spokane’s city limits grew 5.7 percent, to $3.5 billion, while retail trade rose 4.8 percent to $1.7 billion.

Those figures are lower than retail growth in the state’s other largest cities and counties. As an example, taxable retail sales grew 8.4 percent in King County, 11.3 percent in Pierce County and 12.7 percent in Clark County last year. Taxable sales in Seattle climbed 10.6 percent; Tacoma was up 10.1 percent; and Vancouver, 11.5 percent.

Randy Barcus, chief economist at Avista Corp., said it’s understandable that Spokane’s retail sales growth was lower than in those Western Washington locales. “Spokane started growing faster earlier than some of the West Side areas. Our percentages that we’re recording for sales-tax growth are on top of some really big numbers over the last couple of years,” he said.

Seattle

Newspapers still pursue arbitration

Seattle’s embattled daily newspapers have decided to proceed with plans to resolve their long-running legal dispute through binding arbitration.

The Seattle Times Co. and The Hearst Corp., which owns the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, announced the arbitration agreement March 30. But their pact allowed either paper to pull out if King County Superior Court Judge Greg Canova refused to freeze all court proceedings during the process.

Canova did refuse, and until Thursday, it was unclear what would happen to the arbitration plan.

Times President Carolyn Kelly sent an e-mail to Times employees Thursday, saying that while Canova’s April 27 ruling complicated matters, arbitration remains “the clearest and quickest path to resolution.”

The arbitration is to determine whether the newspapers will end a joint operating agreement that dates from 1983.

The Times Co. has been fighting to escape the JOA since 2003, each year claiming the three consecutive years of losses that can trigger an end to the deal.