Basin Pacific Insurance and Benefits’ new building has space for lease

Customers of the local Basin Pacific Insurance and

Benefits branch won’t find the business at its old location on Gage Boulevard

in Kennewick.

The company has moved to a new, bigger location at 6917

W. Grandridge Blvd., Unit 1, along one of the major thoroughfares that will one

day lead into the redeveloped Vista Field area.

“We were looking to stay in this area,” said Brad Toner,

managing partner and owner. “We found an excellent location that will

accommodate our growth for several years.”

The move came during a growth phase for Moses

Lake-headquartered Basin Pacific, which operates 15 independently-owned

locations in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

The insurance broker offers comprehensive insurance and

benefits options for personal, corporate and agricultural clients, customizing

property, casualty, surety and benefits insurance programs to fit their

clients’ needs.

Basin Pacific merged with Manley Crop Insurance of

Prosser in summer 2018, and Toner explained that his team at the Kennewick

branch “have plans for additional growth to support the various needs of

Tri-City area residents and our commercial and agricultural businesses.”

To accommodate the growth trend, Toner decided it was

time to find more space for Basin Pacific to expand over the coming years.

“We were actually trying to find a lot to build on,”

Toner said, but were introduced to the 9,849-square-foot former Swift

Rehabilitation building. “It’s a very quality building … and the more we looked

at it, we thought it would fit us very well.”

Requiring very little renovation to accommodate the needs

of Basin Pacific’s growing team of 14, the new office is about double the size

of the Crown Properties space they leased over the past 4.5 years.

At this time, Basin Pacific occupies about half of the

building — the former corporate office side of Swift Rehabilitation — and is

looking to lease the area that once served as the physical therapy center.

Describing the available space, Toner said, “It really

could be suited for a lot of things; it’s a fairly open space. You could pretty

much do whatever you want in there … it could be turned into nice offices.”

Toner said the extra space will enable Basin Pacific to

expand into the foreseeable future.

“Within five years, we could be at the point where we

keep expanding out into that. Projections-wise, we’re good for the next two to

three years,” he said.

For now, he said the best part of the branch’s new

location is “just having a permanent home, someplace where we know we’re going

to be for a while.”

Toner opened the Kennewick branch of Basin Pacific

Insurance and Benefits in 2010 after becoming acquainted with Gary Trautman in

2009, who opened Basin Insurance in Moses Lake in 1997.  Trautman later changed the name to Basin

Pacific as the company expanded beyond the Columbia Basin.

“From the time I met him, it was just an instant

camaraderie. We’ve been great friends ever since,” Toner recalled.

At the time, Toner had been looking for an opportunity to

strike off on his own after 25 years of working for and holding management

roles at other big names in the local insurance industry — the Northwest Farm

Bureau, Country Companies, and Conover Insurance.

“We started in 2010 with three of us,” Toner said,

recalling that the space Basin Pacific-Kennewick started out in was about the

size of the office he alone now occupies at the new location.

“We’ve grown really rapidly,” he said. “It’s been good

growth; it’s been profitable growth.”

“I think what really separates us is we have a really

service-oriented attitude about things and provide great service to our

clients. Instead of looking more at sales, we look more at the service side of

things. I think we also have the best young staff in the area. We have a lot of

good young agents who are in their 30s and 40s,” Toner said.

Other practices that set Basin Pacific apart are its

willingness to pool its manpower with other insurance agencies, outside

consultants and local attorneys to best assist clients and their unique needs.

“We’re a growth-oriented company,” Toner said, and went

on to explain how Basin Pacific continues to work proactively to respond to

marketplace needs. For example, last year, the Kennewick office created a new

position, whose sole role is to deal with surety and contractor bonds.

“We are expanding more and more into the contractor

marketplace,” Toner said.

Looking to the future, “the next thing we’ll do in the

next two to three years is possibly make another agency acquisition,” Toner

said. “That would be for the purpose of increasing our personal line book of

business … A lot of the independent agents in town, aside from us …(have) a lot

of personal lines of insurance, and not as much large commercial like we have …

So, I think there are going to be opportunities for that in the future.”

Basin Pacific Insurance and Benefits:

509-735-7506; 6917 W. Grandridge Blvd., Unit 1, in Kennewick.