A Tri-Cities businessman and property owner has added to his inventory of property in the Richland Wye area. 

BWR Holdings, which is owned by Apollo Inc. founder and CEO Bruce Ratchford and his wife Lorrie, recently paid about $3 million for 13 parcels, most of them in the block on the west corner of Columbia Center Boulevard and Columbia Park Trail. 

A company representative confirmed to the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business that BWR Holdings bought the properties and that there are no specific plans for them at this time.

BWR Holdings already owns several prominent pieces of property in and adjacent to the Richland Wye, which covers the wedge of land west of Columbia Center Boulevard north of Highway 240 and bounded by the Columbia River. 

The new parcels are primarily in a block between Columbia Center Boulevard and Carolina Avenue on the east and west and Columbia Park Trail and Geneva Street from the north and south. Those properties are largely undeveloped except for two small houses, one of which used to house a car dealership. 

Two of the other parcels located between Florida and Dakota avenues have what appears to be flex commercial/industrial workshops and garages.

In 2023, BWR purchased at auction several parcels in the area that were owned by the late Jerry Sleater. Those included the land currently occupied by the late Sleater’s grocery store Island View Market & Deli and Sage Port Grille, both on Columbia Park Trail. Prior to that, BWR acquired and has refreshed the shopping center at 2600 N. Columbia Center Blvd., where Ted Brown Music is located and is the former home of Chuck E. Cheese. 

Also known as Island View, the area has seen development in fits and starts over the years.  

The Port of Kennewick developed its Spaulding Business Park in the heart of the Richland Wye a decade ago.  

John Bookwalter, the Richland winemaker and restaurateur, established his Fable casual family restaurant in the former R.F. McDougall’s Irish Pub & Eatery on Columbia Park Trail.  Vertisee Heights, an upscale pair of apartment blocks offering loft-style apartments, opened in 2023. 

The area also has had challenges. Richland city officials closed Wye Park, which looks out on the Columbia River and Bateman Island, from October 2024 to March 2025, citing vandalism, illegal activities and safety issues, including drug use, by visitors to the park.  

Currently, part of the park’s parking lot and part of the multiuse trail that passes through it is closed as the Columbia River Marina is removed ahead of the dismantling of the causeway connecting Bateman Island to the shore.