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HAWAII

Home Depot gets Hilo site

Home Depot's plans for a store in Hilo moved forward with the announcement yesterday that the Atlanta-based home-improvement store business was the highest bidder to lease 11 acres of land behind the Prince Kuhio Plaza shopping center. The land owner, the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, said yesterday that Home Depot had the best of several bids.

Home Depot bid a minimum lease of $400,000 a year, 69 percent more than the minimum required bid of $237,000, the department said. The department put the lease out for bid in January after being approached late last summer by Home Depot.

Micah Kane, DHHL director, said Home Depot plans a store of more than 130,000 square feet that will cost $13.2 million to build and will provide 175 new jobs when it opens in the fall of 2004. He said detailed lease negotiations should be completed in September.

Home Depot already has two stores on Oahu and one each in Kahului and Kona. It is building one on Kauai and recently announced plans for a third Oahu store, at Kapolei.

Honolulu firm lands Chicago job

A Honolulu-headquartered development firm has been named project and construction manager for a 73-story housing, retail and hotel project in Chicago, called Grand Pier Center. Construction Management & Development Inc., headed by James Salter, said its first task is to reinstate permits for the project, which was stalled by a dispute between the previous developer and the construction contractor over cost overruns.

CM&D has worked on several high-profile Hawaii jobs, including the Grand Wailea Resort & Spa on Maui and the Ward Entertainment Center on Oahu.

EUROPE

Euro at 4-year high against dollar

FRANKFURT, Germany >> The euro surged above $1.18 yesterday, coming within a penny of its all-time high against the dollar in a rapid climb fed by signals that U.S. officials welcome a weaker currency to spur exports.

The 12-country currency hit $1.1807 in morning trading in Europe, retreated by midday and then surged to $1.1818 in the late afternoon. In New York, the euro edged higher to $1.1827.

The euro is now flirting with its all-time high of $1.1884, reached on Jan. 4, 1999, three days after it began trading on financial markets.

Economists said the euro's rise yesterday was caused less by any breaking news than by the same factors that have made it go up in recent days -- chief among them a perception on financial markets that the United States is perfectly happy to see the dollar go down.

MAINLAND

Wal-Mart fights Chinese TV tariffs

Washington >> Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer, testified against a petition for duties as high as 84 percent on televisions from China, a sign of tension between retailers and manufacturers over surging Chinese imports.

Imports of televisions from China and Malaysia, also included in the complaint, grew to 2.7 million last year from 210,000 in 2000 as companies there have sold the sets at prices below what it cost to make them, according to a complaint from closely held Greeneville, Tenn.-based manufacturer Five Rivers Electronic Innovations and two unions.

A Wal-Mart representative told a meeting yesterday of the U.S. International Trade Commission that the retailer should be able to continue to buy sets from China without any penalizing levies.