A $40,000 private donation is helping a Pasco nonprofit and the people it serves stand a little taller.An unidentified supporter contributed the money to the Knights Community Hospital Equipment Lend Program, better known as KC Help, through the Three Rivers Community Foundation.The donation supports KC Help’s mission to help the...
First Pasco, now Richland.Tri-City renters with a craving for waterfront living soon will be able to choose between apartments on either side of the Columbia River. Cedar and Sage Homes broke ground on Willow Pointe Apartments, a 126-unit “resort” style apartment complex at 250 Battelle Blvd. in north Richland in late...
Bookwalter Winery in Richland will begin its pandemic-delayed expansion this summer. The family-owned winery and restaurant secured permits for the $4 million project in late June. It initially intended to break ground in February but “hit the brakes” when the Covid-19 crisis took hold earlier this year. John BookwalterJohn Bookwalter leads...
As Tri-City business and civic leaders work to tame local Covid-19 infection rates so more businesses can open, some of the Mid-Columbia’ biggest employers say forgivable paycheck loans were a “lifeline” that helped them keep valuable employees.Benton and Franklin counties moved into a modified version of Phase 1 of Washington’s...
Tri-City home sales are defying the expectations of a stressed economy. But real estate insiders aren’t surprised.A tight inventory of homes for sale coupled with unprecedented low mortgage interest rates and an unemployment rate that’s lower than the rest of the state is keeping the market moving.The first five months...
Great disruptions can bring great opportunities.For Derrick Stricker, a Tri-City commercial real estate broker, working during the Great Recession in Chicago drove that idea home.Now, a decade older and working in the Mid-Columbia, he’s one of the many local entrepreneurs who see new opportunity in the Covid-19 pandemic.Or rather, an...
Talk was going around. Politicians in Washington were developing a coronavirus package with a generous program to save jobs at small businesses affected by the pandemic.Eric Pearson, chief executive officer of Kennewick-based Community First Bank, recalls the talk. Nothing was official. The Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act...
The Port of Kennewick used wineries to woo tourists and hungry crowds to an industrial stretch of Columbia Drive.Now food is following, all part of the port’s plan to use its wine-themed tourism to spark development and reconnect Kennewick to its downtown waterfront.“The tourism focus was the driving factor for...
One good thing happened when Crow Butte Park in southern Benton County closed to campers because of the Covid-19 crisis.No one was camping in early June when a storm blew through. Lightning struck an irrigation pump and 14 large trees blew down in the campground.Normally, all 52 campsites would have...
Michael Novakovich is by nature and by profession an optimist.As president of Visit Tri-Cities, his job is to champion the people, places and things that draw tourists to the Mid-Columbia, to fill its shops, bars, restaurants and hotel rooms.Visitors spent more than $560 million in Benton and Franklin counties in...
