Seattle Looks and Feels Good Enough to Rank Among Groupon’s Most-Pampered U.S. Cities

GeekWire | Kurt Schlosser | March 14

http://www.geekwire.com/2016/groupon-most-pampered-cities/

“If you’re in Seattle and have been feeling especially relaxed or looking intentionally polished, perhaps it’s because you’re a Groupon user intent on cashing in on beauty and spa offers. The online deals site has named its 25 most-pampered cities in the U.S. and Seattle made the top 10. Seattle ranks No. 8 on the list of cities where people bought the most massages, haircuts, manicures, tanning sessions and other indulgent deals on a per user basis. The Emerald City somehow edged out places where people look good for a living, such as Los Angeles and Miami.”

 

Seattle Area’s Top Business Leaders Unveil Plan to Improve Traffic

Puget Sound Business Journal | Ashley Stewart | March 14

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2016/03/seattle-areas-top-business-leaders-unveil-plan-to.html

“For Puget Sound-area companies, transportation is a matter of competitiveness. That’s why top executives from some of the region’s biggest companies aren’t leaving infrastructure improvements up to the public sector…Starting with the development of the University of Washington-based Mobility Innovation Center, the group plans to use local companies as models for a new system…Through the plan, Seattle-area companies are taking responsibility to get the region ready for the growth they’re creating.”

 

A Decade of Growth: How Amazon’s Cloud Business Changed – And Will Keep Changing – Seattle

Puget Sound Business Journal | Rachel Nielsen | March 14

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2016/03/a-decade-of-growth-how-amazons-cloud-business.html

“Ten years ago, Amazon.com (Nasdaq: AMZN) quietly launched a new product that made its own server system available for other companies to rent. A decade later, Amazon Web Services is the company’s fastest-growing business worth nearly $8 billion. It has launched a new industry – cloud computing – that could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming years. AWS has given shape to an ecosystem of cloud companies in the Seattle area and turned the region into cloud city.”

 

Take a Look Inside Capitol Hill’s Long-Awaited Light-Rail Station

Seattle Times | Mike Lindblom | March 14

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/see-inside-capitol-hills-long-awaited-light-rail-station/

“The new Capitol Hill Station will make it possible to ride up from downtown Seattle in four minutes, grab a burger at Dick’s and attend college classes, all without crossing a busy street. It would be easy to dismiss the importance of the tunneled light-rail stop — to open at 10 a.m. Saturday — because its location on Broadway already can be reached on buses, streetcars, bicycles and sidewalks. It won’t prevent congestion. But there is something to be said for giving people options to avoid a packed evening bus that crawls uphill, or to avoid walking around jammed cars in the crosswalks at Boren and Pine.”

 

Check Out UW’s New Light-Rail Station – And How It Could Transform Seattle

Seattle Times | Mike Lindblom | March 12

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/check-out-uws-new-light-rail-station-and-how-it-could-transform-seattle/

“The arrival of Link light rail at the University of Washington is guaranteed to take at least one car off the road. Sue Morgan drives from south Beacon Hill very early to hunt for free curbside parking on the back streets north of campus, then walks to lower Roosevelt Way or Red Square, where she maintains websites for the UW Information School…Starting next Saturday when a light-rail station opens at the university, Morgan can walk onto a train and take a 30-minute, one-seat trip…UW Station and Capitol Hill Station, also opening next weekend, along with the Angle Lake park-and-ride station to open in SeaTac this fall, together are projected to add 45,000 weekday passengers by 2021, for a total of 80,000 in a 21-mile system.”