Business Briefs

Reported by Star-Bulletin staff & wire

Wednesday, August 20, 1997

A&B Properties buys
Washington building

A&B Properties Inc. has acquired a two-story office building near Seattle for $1.3 million.

The Alexander & Baldwin Inc. unit said the 9,059-square-foot, six-year-old structure, known as the 901 Hildebrand Lane Building, is the company's third investment in Bainbridge Island, Wash. on Puget Sound. In 1990, A&B Properties acquired the nearby Island Village Shopping Center. Last year, the company bought another parcel in the area for retail development.

State Web site offers
help to entrepreneurs

In an effort to make it easier to start a business in Hawaii, Gov. Ben Cayetano today unveiled a new Internet web site for state business forms.

The new web site, dubbed "Getting Down to Business," will allow local entrepreneurs to download applications for a state general excise tax license and registration forms for business trade names.

The site also will be linked to Internal Revenue Service's site for tax forms and the Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism's on-line publications for entrepreneurs. The site is located at http://www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/start.html.

"Our purpose is to expand access to start-up information," Cayetano said. "It's part of our continuing efforts to make it easier to do business in Hawaii and use technology to restructure government."

McDonald's rethinks
Arch Deluxe burgers

CHICAGO -- The days may be numbered for the Arch Deluxe "adult" cheeseburger McDonald's Corp. introduced last year with lots of fanfare.

The company said today that it is re-evaluating the sandwich, and analysts said that suggests McDonald's might drop the Arch Deluxe altogether. However, company officials say there are no plans to discontinue the sandwich and that they might cut prices instead to attract customers. Analysts have estimated McDonald's spent $100 million to introduce the Arch Deluxe, only to see customers turn their noses up at the burger.

In other news . . .

NEW YORK -- Sun Microsystems Inc. and Oracle Corp. have tightened their alliance against archrival Microsoft Corp., announcing an agreement to sell a package of Oracle's database software with Sun's business computers. Using Oracle's software, the Sun computers enable businesses to run networks of smaller machines.