A look back at the biggest local business news of 2015

It’ll probably be written about in business textbooks, explored in college classrooms.

Haggen Food &Pharmacy surprised everyone by buying 146 grocery stores during the Albertsons-Safeway merger.

Within months, problems emerged and the fallout could threaten the very existence of the Bellingham grocer.

Haggen’s big-deal-gone-sideways headlines the top business news stories of 2015. And it will likely continue to make headlines for months to come.

Another surprise came when Arlington’s MicroGreen Polymers, once a darling of the clean-tech industry with its eco-friendly cups, suddenly shut its doors.

Other business news included an Everett developer who was accused of defrauding foreign investors, union members protesting a decision by Boeing to locate a plant in China and major health institutions in the Puget Sound area announcing intentions to merge.

One deal that fell apart was the one between Everett’s Coastal Community Bank and Lynnwood’s Prime Pacific Bank, two of the county’s remaining community banks. On the bright side, Boeing’s KC-46 aerial refueling tanker finally got off the ground after months of delay.

“The Air Force is going to love it,” a retired Boeing worker said at the time.

1. Haggen’s spectacular failure

Haggen grabbed headlines this year with the $300 million acquisition of 146 stores from Albertsons and Safeway.

With the deal, Haggen went from 18 stores with 16 pharmacies in Washington and Oregon to 164 grocery stores with 106 pharmacies all over the West Coast. The company also went from 2,000 employees to more than 10,000, almost overnight.

Haggen took over the first of the new stores on Feb. 1, a former Albertsons in Monroe.

It quickly became a case of the minnow choking on the whale. The chain faced pricing problems. And then stock problems. By September, Haggen sued Albertsons for $1 billion over the deal.

A little more than a week after that, Haggen filed for bankruptcy with a plan to sell or close many of the new stores and reorganize around its core profitable ones.

That might not work out. Haggen has asked permission from the bankruptcy court to auction its 37 remaining profitable stores. A hearing is scheduled for January.

Independent supermarket researcher David Livingston criticized Haggen during the summer.

“They didn’t have the wherewithal to do this deal,” Livingston said. “They were pretty much set up by Albertsons. Albertsons was able to pick exactly who they wanted to take over their stores and they picked the weakest competitor. Were they duped? Yeah, no one argues that.”

2. MicroGreen’s sudden closure

Arlington’s MicroGreen Polymers attracted $80 million in investment for its 8-ounce InCycle coffee cup that was supposed to be cheaper, more durable and more eco-friendly than traditional foam or coated paper cups.

Major airlines were serving coffee in the cups.

And MicroGreen won a host of industry honors.

MicroGreen spent years developing the environmentally friendly cup.

And then it all came crashing down.

The company struggled to raise tens of millions of dollars needed to ramp up production quickly enough to meet demand and cover the company’s expenses.

In January, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde in Oregon, MicroGreen’s biggest investor, tired of the company failing to make a profit and forced out the company’s longtime chief executive officer, Tom Malone.

By April, Microgreen closed, leaving 160 people without work.

MicoGreen’s assets — including the technology behind the cups — were bought at auction for $3.5 million in October by Dart Container, the maker of the red Solo cups.

3. Developer accused of fraud

Everett developer Lobsang Dargey had been a bright spot for downtown Everett. In 2011, he built the $22 million Potala Village development on Pacific Avenue. And he went on to build a $60 million Potala Place and Farmer’s Market at Grand Avenue and Wall Street.

“I love Everett,” Dargey said in 2014. “Everett is like a jewel that not been discovered yet.”

Just as the second project was opening, the Securities and Exchange Commission accused Dargey of defrauding foreign investors of millions of dollars. Dargey had raised $125 million from Chinese nationals for Potala Place and another project in Seattle, Potala Tower.

The investments came through a federal program called EB-5, which offers a shortcut to a U.S. visa if someone invests in a project that creates jobs in the country.

The SEC alleges that Dargey misused and misappropriated millions, including spending money shopping at luxury stores and trips to casinos in Washington and Las Vegas.

Dargey’s attorneys have said that the SEC is overstating its case, which comes down to sloppy bookkeeping and not fraud.

The case is ongoing.

4. Tanker’s first flight

It had the makings of a festive morning. And then everybody held their breath collectively.

After months of delay and hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns, Boeing’s KC-46 tankers was scheduled for its first flight at Paine Field one morning in late September.

But a cool and foggy morning delayed takeoff. Dozens who gathered to watch the plane finally take off, took shelter in the coffee shop of the Future of Flight Aviation Center.

By the afternoon, the flight was back on. The plane left Everett at 1:24 p.m. and landed four hours later in Seattle.

Boeing is scheduled to deliver 18 combat-ready tankers to the U.S. Air Force by August 2017.

The planes will replace the KC-135 Stratotankers, which entered service decades ago. Military pilots have joined Boeing pilots on testing the new plane.

5. Boeing in China

Chinese president Xi Jinping flew to Everett, toured the Boeing plant and spent 48 hours in the Puget Sound area.

During the visit, Boeing received an order for 300 jets from Chinese companies.

Xi left with a commitment from the plane maker to build a 737 finishing plant in China, the company’s first plant outside the U.S.

Boeing follows Airbus’ lead in placing a plant in China; the European airplane maker opened one there in 2008.

Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Ray Conner told workers that the new plant would not reduce 737 Program employment in Washington. That didn’t prevent union workers from protesting outside the Everett and Renton plants during Xi’s visit.

“The more capacity created outside Washington, the harder it makes it for aerospace workers in Washington to compete,” said Jon Holden, president of District Lodge 751 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

6. Health care mergers planned

The Everett Clinic was founded in 1924. Group Health started in 1947. Both have become institutions in the Puget Sound area.

And both were potentially merging with larger health care companies. The Everett Clinic announced plans in September to merge with Denver, Colorado-based DaVita Healthcare. In December, Group Health announced that it was being purchased by Kaiser Permanente, based in Oakland, California.

The Everett Clinic will keep its name and continue to be led by a physician board, said Rick Cooper, the clinic’s chief executive. Patients would notice little change, he said, either in dealing with a physician or with insurance issues. “It will be business as usual,” he said. Both deals needed to be agreed to by shareholders as well as insurance regulators.

7. Bank merger denied

There was some poetry to the idea: The largest bank headquartered in Snohomish County would merge with the oldest.

But it was not to be.

Everett’s Coastal Community Bank and Lynnwood’s Prime Pacific announced plans to combine in April.

Coastal, with 11 branches, is mainly based in central and northern Snohomish County. Prime Pacific, with three branches, is based in the southern part of Snohomish and northern part of King County.

Coastal hoped to expand to the south with the merger.

When the merger was announced, Prime Pacific was still operating under a consent order from the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the result of what the government called unsafe and unsound banking during the recession. In June, Prime Pacific was released from that order. And Prime Pacific was on track to have three consecutive profitable years.

With the improved financial footing, Prime Pacific’s shareholders voted down the merger in October.