Nearly half of Tri-Citians either continued to travel by air during the pandemic or expect to return to flying within three months, according to a passenger survey conducted for the Port of Pasco, which owns and operates the Tri-Cities Airport. The survey was conducted online in June and July and drew...

Help is now available for Tri-City renters who are unable to pay rent because of Covid-19 job losses.The Tri-Cities Home Consortium received $700,000 in Federal HOME funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and began accepting applications for rental assistance on Aug. 17.The consortium consists of the cities of Kennewick, Pasco and...

John Corbin is not happy.The Tri-City Chuck E. Cheese restaurant, a franchise he’s helmed for 38 years, closed in March when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee issued the Stay Home, Stay Healthy order to curtail the spread of coronavirus. Just 16 months earlier, he’d moved Chuck E. Cheese to a 14,000-square-foot state-of-the-art...

When Kennewick’s Trios Health was sold to a for-profit company in 2018, the managers of the Trios Foundation were left in a pickle.The nonprofit had $2.2 million in assets, lots of worthy targets for donations, and no home.Led by Pete Toolson, the board considered its options. Several worthy charities wanted...

The property owners of Benton and Franklin counties didn’t miss a beat when it was time to pay property tax bills on some $31.5 billion in real estate in April, when the first of two payment deadlines came due.The county treasurers who collect taxes say collections were normal, despite widespread...

Wearing a mask saves lives and saves jobs.And all across the state, Washington employers are leading by example in the fight to stop the spread of the coronavirus.From Seattle to our small towns, workers are masking up before starting their shifts on manufacturing floors, in restaurant kitchens, construction sites and...

The jobless rate fell sharply in June across Washington and in the Tri-Cities as local economies partly reopened under the Safe Start program, according to figures released July 21 by the Washington Employment Security Department.In the Tri-Cities, unemployment fell to 9.1%, down three full points from the 12.3% rate posted...

A Pasco company specializing in hauling chemicals, de-icers, pesticides and more has a new ownership group led by the insurance agent who covered its business for decades.Chad Messerly and his partners, Brian May and Morgan Haynes, bought Harms Pacific Transport Inc. in a deal that closed July 1.The sellers were...

A Kennewick tech startup is transforming the way businesses process their payment transactions, even as coronavirus shutdowns and restrictions threatened its business model.“It’s interesting because we’re focused on brick-and-mortar transactions, so when Covid hit, we thought we were dead,” said Jeff Payne, BlockChyp’s chief technology officer. BlockChyp designs payment terminals...

Terry Brown and his wife, Annie Ackerman-Brown, didn’t develop a business plan or research how they could best help young people in mental anguish when they launched BlessedbyKess.Faith led them to create the nonprofit, which uses virtual reality, or VR, technology to help Tri-Citians reduce stress and improve mental health....