Tri-City Area and Real Estate Blog

On Tuesday a $500,000 boost came to the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center from the state supplemental budget. This funding came from the Heritage Capital Projects Fund, a program run by the state Historical Society. The Richland Public Facilities District, who is the public agency overlooking the construction of the Center found that another agency had withdrawn its request for funding and decided to request the legislature to redistribute the money to the Reach project.

The Center is a proposed 61,000 square-foot interpretive center which will tell the story of the Hanford Reach National Monument and the surrounding plants and wildlife, geology and historyof the region. The location for the Center has been in flux from the start after objections from area tribes. However, a proposal to place the building at the west end of Columbia Park is under consideration by both the Kennewick and Richland city councils, as they work on the master plan for Columbia Park as a whole.

Washington State University Tri Cities is $500,000 richer after an award from Hanford contractor, Mission Support Alliance. It is MSA’s intent to assist in strenghening the number of under-represented students who will be studying engineering, technology, math and science. It is MSA’s hope the invest in students and create a STEM-trained work force in the Tri Cities. The funding will be disbursed over 10 years with the majority of it will be for scholarships that will assist students studying STEM curriculum.

The TRAC facility in Pasco is the place to be this April 28th and 29th if you are a small business owner. The Annual Bridging Partnership Small Business Symposium will take place over these   2 days and will teach business owners the “ins and outs” of partnering with Hanford contractors to pick up government business. The event is sponsored by PNNL, TRIDEC, DOE and the primary contractors of the Hanford area. There will be a 4-hour tour of the Hanford site on Wednesday and an expo with 100 vendors is included. The cost for the event is $75 is pre-registered prior to April 15.  More information is available by calling 509-735-1000.

City council members from both Kennewick and Richland are in agreement that the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center would be a wonderful addition to the west end of Columbia Park, however there are concerns about the money to make it a reality.  Development of the west end of the park have long been debated, with alternatives for both commerical development and keeping it as a public park with improvements visualized.  The public would like to have a more useable park atmosphere, while planners & developers for both cities wanted more options for commerical use. When the option to add the Reach Center was proposed, it seemed like a perfect fit. The final decision lies in the hands of the Corps of Engineers and potentially could be approved next week.  Let’s keep our fingers cross that the Reach Center finds a new home in Columbia Park and that all parties involved can find a middle ground on the issue.

Preparations are being made by three Tri-City leaders to file a federal lawsuit stopping the Obama administration from eliminating the previously set in place plans to use Yucca Mountain, Nevada, a national repository for Hanford waste.  This is one of what is expected to be many lawsuits calling for the federal government to cease-and-desist abandonment of plans to use Yucca Mountain as a national repository for used fuel from commercial nuclear power plants and high-level radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production.

Tri-Citians Bob Ferguson, Bill Lampson and Gary Petersen had a letter delivered to the White House requesting a chance to have a dialogue regarding the issue.  Aiken County, S.C. has also filed a federal lawsuit as well because 13 states have weapons waste that by law must go to a national repository. Congress had previously designated Yucca Mountain as the national site for high-level waste, and that designation is in the law, and the administration is unilaterally changing the law.

If the plans are abandoned, Yucca would become a $10 billion hole in the ground, and it is believed that the decision is political rather than scientific . If Yucca Mountain used utilized, then Hanford waste could stay here indefinitely.

Yes, Hanford is still the core of the Tri Cities economy but there is so much more happening here that generates revenue for the Tri City economy. In the last 2 decades, other businesses have developed and created the diversity this area needed badly.

In the past, the economy of the Tri Cities has been cyclic with extreme ups and downs depending on the funding provided to the Hanford employers. With the hard work of many individuals and organizations, the economy here has diversified to include major employers in the agricultural, food processing and health care industries, which have added the most significant growth and more stability to the Tri City area.

Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL) have played a significant role in the job growth as well since they are the area’s largest single employer, with only 7 percent of their work being related to Hanford in 2009.

The Tri-Cities has established it’s own identify away from Hanford, and this has been supported by the increase of the population that has occurred over the last 10 years, without following the hiring trends at Hanford. We have become home to a diverse marketplace that will continue long past the cleanup at Hanford.