Nov 01, 2002

Northwest Hospital & Medical Center

Sam Rand Taagen, MD has joined Northwest Hospital & Medical Center as a primary care physician specializing in internal medicine. Taagen, who completed his residency and internship at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland, will practice at Northwest Primary Care on the hospital's campus in Seattle.

Davis Wright Tremaine

Davis Wright Tremaine named Youssef A. Sneifer as of counsel and Lucy Endel Bassli as an associate in its Seattle office. Sneifer and Bassli were previously with Shulkin Huttin. Sneifer will focus on credit recovery, bankruptcy, international insolvency and commercial transactions. Bassli will focus on bankruptcy, insolvency and credit recovery.

King County Cultural Development Council

Paul J. Ishii, general manager of the Mayflower Park Hotel, has been appointed to the board of King County's new Cultural Development Council. Ishii will represent Federal Way on the council.

Paccar

The Washington Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and Independent Colleges of Washington, named Paccar as the recipient of its 2002 Stanley O. McNaughton Leadership Award. Created in 1999, the award is given to community leaders in recognition of their support for independent colleges and universities and their students. Paccar has been a contributor to the organization since 1954.

Seattle Goodwill

Seattle Goodwill has been awarded a $9,500 grant from the Verizon Foundation. The grant will be used to support Goodwill's adult basic education program in Mount Vernon. The grant will provide for literacy services and basic education to Skagit County residents.

Washington Restaurant Association

The Washington Restaurant Association and its Education Foundation honored several individuals and restaurants with its annual hospitality awards. Jerry Burtenshaw of ABC Services in Bellevue was awarded the DeVere Jerry Burtenshaw Lifetime Achievement Award, named in his honor, for contributions to the hospitality industry over the last 40 years. Named to the 2002 WRA all-star team were: Debbie Atwell of The Crab House in Port Angeles, James Beattie of Copper Sky Woodfire Grill & Bar, Dennis Curnutt of Trattoria Mitchelli, David Dorough of Vince's Italian Restaurant, Terry Lewis of Flounder Bay Café in Anacortes, Summer Poulton of Red Robin in Olympia, Lindsay Roth of Red Robin in Bellingham and Beatriz Verbera of Azteca. The Host of the Year Award went to Dany Mitchell of Mitchelli Family Restaurants, Sanford Brown of Heartland Payment Systems received the Supplier of the Year Award and The Flying Pig Brewing Co. in Everett and Great Western Dining Red Robin of Vancouver were named as Restaurant Neighbor Awards recipients.

Oct 31, 2002

Microsoft TV

Microsoft Corp. has named Tim Fritzley vice president of sales and services for the Microsoft TV Division. Fritzley will oversee sales, business development and customer support for the division, working with network operators and industry partners to deploy digital and interactive television services around the globe. He has more than 25 years of communications, cable, satellite and wireless experience, and was president and CEO of Ceon Corp.

Seattle Art Museum

Jay Xu curator of Chinese art at the Seattle Art Museum , has taken a new position as Pritzker Curator of Asian Art at the Art Institute of Chicago. He will be leaving his post March 31, 2003. Xu has been at SAM since 1996. Xu organized "Treasures from a Lost Civilization: Ancient Art from Sichuan" at SAM in 2001.

Assurex Global

Assurex Global announced that Gregory Collins of the Bellevue office of Parker Smith & Feek was elected chairman of the international insurance brokerage's board of directors. He will serve through 2004. Assurex Global is made up of independent insurance brokers on six continents.

Short Cressman & Burgess

The Seattle law firm of Short Cressman & Burgess announced J. Britton Gourley has joined as of counsel. Formerly a member of Cozen O'Connor, Gourley is in the firm's business law and estate planning groups.

First Heritage Bank

First Heritage Bank plans to double and then triple the number of customers it serves with Small Business Administration loans. The bank has added David Ellis to the lending staff. He has 15 years experience. Senior Vice President Walter McLaughlin is moving his department out of the main office in Snohomish to the Monroe branch, where his staff will focus solely on SBA lending. Heritage said it consistently ranks in the top 10 of SBA lenders in the state, placing seventh in 2001.

CREW will look at biotech development

Bill Neil, Douglas Howe and Tim McBride will discuss biotech real estate at the next monthly luncheon of Commercial Real Estate Women. The noon event is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 14, at the Washington Athletic Club in downtown Seattle. Neil is a broker for Insignia Kidder Mathews who has assembled major biotech deals. Howe is president of Touchstone Corp., a Seattle developer that recently finished constructing a Belltown office building leased by Philips Medical N.V.'s heart defibrillator unit. This month, Howe signed the biomed firm Corixa to a 138,000-square-foot lease that will kick off construction of a 200,000-square-foot Denny Triangle biomed building next spring. McBride is facilities director for genome researcher Leroy Hood's Institute for Systems Biology, which moved 170 biologists into a North Lake Union facility last year. For more information about the lunch, call CREW at (206) 361-6859.

Harsch Investment Properties

Mitchell

Tim Mitchell was promoted to vice president of acquisitions at Portland-based Harsch Investment Properties, a Schnitzer family-controlled firm with holdings in the Seattle area and an interest in buying more here. Mitchell joined Harsch in 1999 and has handled acquisitions and dispositions for 11 industrial, retail or office properties totaling 1.2 million square feet, with a total value of $114 million. Before Harsh, Mitchell worked as a vice president for Franklin Croft LLC. Prior to that, he was with William R. Wood & Associates in San Diego.

Apartment investment and developer confab

Cushman & Wakefield has scheduled an apartment investor and developer symposium for Jan. 23. Speakers will include C&W broker Greg Laycock, Vic Faris of McDonald Investments, KeyBank's Tracy Edgers, Dupre + Scott's Mike Scott and economist Doug Pederson. The event, called "Capital Directions: Northwest Symposium," will start at 8 a.m. in the Columbia Tower Club atop the Bank of America Tower in downtown Seattle.

Real estate law seminars

Law Seminars International will hold a one-day workshop on real estate remedies on Nov. 12 at the state convention center in downtown Seattle. Then on Dec. 16 and 17, the organization will put on a two-day program on Advanced Commercial Real Estate Leases, also at the convention center. For information, call (206) 621-1938.

LandAmerica

Martin Strelecky was promoted to vice president and manager for national commercial services for the title insurance firm LandAmerica Financial Group in Seattle. Strelecky joined Commonwealth Land Title, now a LandAmerica subsidiary, as vice president and counsel in 1994. Strelecky holds a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois and a law degree from DePaul University.

The next "Breakfast with LandAmerica" will address: "Why Title Insurance?" The title company's senior underwriting counsel, John Rapp, will talk. The event is Tuesday, Nov. 19, from 7:30 to 9 a.m., at the Washington Athletic Club in downtown Seattle. For information, call (206) 628-4650.

ULI lauds Hines

The Urban Land Institute gave Gerald Hines, chairman of the Texas-based development firm known as Hines, its J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionary Urban Development. Institute judges particularly praised Hines for emphasizing "high-quality architecture." The development company built three major office projects in the Seattle area during the recent boom: the IDX Tower in downtown Seattle, 112th@12th next to downtown Bellevue and Cedar Court near the Microsoft campus in Redmond.