Four years to the day after its city hall burned down, Prosser’s municipal government has a new home and a new roommate. 

City and Benton County officials will have a signing ceremony May 8 celebrating the city leasing the entire first floor of the Benton County Courthouse as well as the attached annex building, according to a release.  

The city will pay nearly $4,300 per month, or more than $51,000 per year, for the 9,375-square-foot space. The payments will increase 2% annually over the 10-year term of the lease. The city will cover one-third of the building’s utility expenses. 

“This partnership allows the county to maintain sufficient space for essential services at the county seat while optimizing available areas of the courthouse campus,” the county said in a statement. 

Prosser is the Benton County seat, and the county has offices there as well as in Kennewick. 

According to city documents, city services are expected to move into the courthouse over the summer, though a specific timeline is not yet available. 

Prosser’s city hall and adjacent police station were destroyed in early May 2021 by a fire that started in a neighboring meat shop. The city received millions of dollars in insurance money but efforts to build a new home for city offices and police stalled. Voters rejected a nearly $17 million bond in November 2022 that would have built a new city hall and police station. 

County officials say there are plans to subdivide and sell portions of the surrounding courthouse campus property to the city for a new police station in the future.  

“At the end of the day, our mission as public servants is to be good stewards of the resources entrusted to us,” city and county officials said in a joint statement. “This partnership reflects that mission – bringing together two agencies in a shared vision to achieve something many once thought was impossible.” 

The courthouse, built in 1926, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.