A 10,000-square-foot building near the Country Mercantile in Richland is poised to bring new retail or other commercial development to a growing area near Badger Mountain.
The man who started Bouten Construction immigrated from Belgium as a young boy and went to work building houses with his father at age 13 before eventually starting his own construction company, which celebrates 80 years in business this year.
As many longtime employees begin to reach retirement age, and as some operations and activities at the site ramp up, maintaining and bolstering the Hanford workforce – which numbers more than 11,000 people – is a mission-critical endeavor, officials said.
Atlas Agro expects to decide by the end of the year whether to move forward with a $1 billion zero-carbon nitrate fertilizer plant in Richland – a project the Swiss company describes as a pioneering initiative aimed at revolutionizing the fertilizer industry.