Tri-City Area and Real Estate Blog

According to the Tri Cities Visitor & Convention Bureau, the Tri Cities is a wonderful spot for tourism with a 4 percent increase in rented hotel rooms in the community for 2009.  In comparison to the other areas like Spokane, Yakima and King County which saw drops in their hotel occupancy, the Tri Cities boasts $366 million in travel and tourism which helps support more than 4,400 jobs per year; this of course helps to diversify our community even more.

Wineries, golf, and recreational activities in the sunshine attracts folks to the wonderful Tri Cities, and we’re always hopeful that some of those tourists will become residents one day! Conventioners have brought big business and tourist dollars to the Tri Cities to the tune of 113,000 visitors which converts to more than $32.5 million in direct spending. Thus far for 2010 and beyond, around 180 conventions and sporting events have been scheduled worth $34.9 million in local spending.

The bureau has made tremendous strides to present the Tri Cities to the outside world, and to share all our positive aspects, which are many and diverse. They have been delightfully successful! When you come visit us and decide to stay, the agents at Distinctive Properties, Inc.,  will be more than happy to assist you with your real estate needs. Check us out at  www.distinctiveprop.com

In spite of the ongoing recession, the Tri-Cities is faring much better that the rest of the state and nation. There was a gain in August of 2,400 nonfarm jobs, which is more than a 2.5 percent growth. Our strengths of food processing, health care, higher education and the Hanford area jobs made for a stable environment in Kennewick, Pasco and Richland.

This isn’t a “boom” period for the Tri-Cities, nor is it a “bust”. The wonderful work that has been done in the way of diversifying this area over the last 20 years, has made a marked improvement in our communities being able to weather the ups and downs of the economy.

Randy and Jolene Bibe have been eating at the Spaghetti Establishment for about 15 years, but as of this week they’re getting a different look at the longtime Kennewick eatery. The Bibes bought the restaurant from Dick and Karlene Nordness, who were ready to move on.

“It was a good 16-plus years for us,” Dick Nordness said. “We hope that Randy is going to enjoy it as much as we did.” Customers of the restaurant shouldn’t notice many changes.

Staff are staying on board, including the head cook of more than 25 years, and the menu will mostly look the same.  “You don’t take something that’s not broken and try to fix is,” Randy Bibe said.

He started thinking about buying the restaurant in January. “It’s time to do something I’ve wanted to do my whole life,” he said. “I love to cook. I enjoy being around people,” and he likes the autonomy of being a small-business owner. “There are just way too many pluses,” he said. 

Meanwhile, the Nordnesses enjoyed a dinner at home together on a Wednesday night for the first time in a long while, Dick Nordness said. The couple will be free to go visit their two adult children, who live outside the country, without being tied to the restaurant. And they’re thrilled that the Spaghetti Establishment won’t change much.

“We wanted to make sure that our employees still had jobs,” Dick Nordness said. “We were please to find an owner that wanted to keep the traditions.”

A quarterly survey reveals the cities expecting the largest employment growth–and losses–across the country. Thanks to last year’s strong harvest of apples and the jobs that followed in juicing, packaging and shipping. Yakima, Wash., has the strongest employment outlook in the country for the second quarter of 2009, according to a quarterly survey by employment services firm Manpower.

“This is an agricultural base, a huge apple-growing region,” says Bill Cook, director of community and economic development for Yakima, Washington has the strongest employment outlook in the country for the second quarter of 2009, according to a quarterly survey by employment services firm Manpower.

“This is an agricultural base, a huge apple-growing region,” says Bill Cook, director of community and economic development for Yakima. “Last year’s apple harvest was huge, and it helped carry employment through  the winter. Even in normal economic year that wouldn’t happen.”

Cities in the Pacific Northwest and Texas have the best employment outlook for April through June, while cities in the Southeast have the weakest, according to the survey.

Kennewick, Washington is #2!  Net employment outlook +19%.

Once home to the nation’s most Ph.D.’s per capita, Kennewick has an impressive number of engineers and scientists. Pacific Northwest National Lab employs many of them to convert agricultural materials into plastics and biofuels and perform research involving fuel cells. The region’s farmland also provides job, with workers growing, potatoes, corn, asparagus and wheat.

Source:  Tara Weiss and Emily Schmitt, www.forbes.com

Green jobs are a hot topic in Olympia today. Tri-City business leaders are on the bandwagon, spending a couple of days on the Capital campus promoting our region as a hotbed of green jobs.

Our strongest foray into the realm of greenness is the energy produced here: We’ve got hydro-electric, wind, solar and nuclear. We’re at the forefront of bio fuel technology, thanks to the Bioproducts, Sciences and Engineering Laboratory at Washington State University Tri-Cities.

We can talk — and make — energy all day long. And good jobs come along with creating and transmitting energy, from construction to distribution. But when you’re really talking green, that’s about all we’ve got, not to minimize the impact and importance of our ability to harness wind, water and sun, but the image of the “green” utopia hardly pops to mind when thinking of the Tri-Cities.

We’ve got decades of work ahead as we continue to clean up Hanford, and nuclear wastes are what too many people outside the region envision when the Tri-Cities are mentioned. But we have a long way to go to develop a green reputation.

It’s great that community leaders are working to promote our area as a hotbed for green jobs.

We’ve got the industry and resources to create green jobs, and the Legislature, govenor’s office and state economic officials all need to be on board to ensure we take full advantage of that potential.

But we all need to walk the walk if we’re going to talk the talk. The time is right to brand the Tri-Cities as green-friendly. To that end, we need to make our area more marketable to the green industry.

Companies looking to locate a green business in a new city have to care about the environment in which they work and their employees reside. It’s part of the job.

Now we need to do ours and put programs into place that put a greener light on our region.

Tri-City Herald “Our Voice” opinion

The Tri-Cities gained about 3,100 non-farm jobs over the past year, but the national economic slowdown is beginning to take a toll as 800 non-farm jobs were lost last month, the State Employment Security Department reported Tuesday.

Annual data shows the Tri-Cities has weathered the economic storm better than much of the state, said Dean Schau, regional labor economist for the state Employment Security Department. he said the unemployment rate for Benton and Franklin counties in November was 6.1 percent, compared with the state’s overall rate of 6.4 percent.

Schau said area job gains came in the professional and business services sector; the retail, leisure and hospitality industries, and at school districts. But he said job growth has slowed and the number of unemployment insurance claims has risen significantly. Most of that is from losses in seasonal employment in agriculture and construction, he said.

There’s potential for further job losses, Schau said, but the food production, power generation industry and medical equipment manufacturing sector will help stabilize the area economy, “These are things people are gonna have to buy,” he said. Of the non-farm jobs lost last month, 600 were in the construction sector, which had supported 7,000 workers in October. Previously planned public and private capital projects have been completed and construction projects as there are fewer jobs to be had.

Manufacturing jobs also were down over the month by 500 as food processors slowed production in the fourth quarter. “The third quarter has the highest employment for the industry as it has to digest the late-season wine, potato and apple harvests,” Schau said. Like construction, food manufacturing had its best year in 2007, and during the first two quarters of 2008 it was up 5.2 percent over the same time the previous year, he said.

Meanwhile, retail trade saw an increase of 400 seasonal jobs in November, bringing the total jobs there to 12,000, up 200 from November 2007. Jobs in the financial services sector and wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing remained mostly flat. About 100 positions were added in the food services industry in November, and the sector gained about 400 jobs over the year.

Although the number of workers in the Tri-Cities labor force declined from 126,470 in October to 124,220 in November, that still was up by 4,450 workers compared with November 2007, Schau said. Candice Bluechel, business services outreach manager at WorkSource Columbia Basin, said the loss of 3,100 agricultural jobs in November led to a rush of job seekers at WorkSource.

There are about 65 job openings listed currently at WorkSource, Bluechel said. In Washington, the services sector jobs that comprise about 68 percent of all state jobs have been a saving grace, said Mary Ayala, chief economist for the state Employment Security Department. Those higher paying jobs haven’t been caught in the cyclical downward trend, she said.

But Ayala said an estimated 222,551 people are looking for work in the state and about 22,700 non-agricultural jobs were lost in November. “Just as we saw with the 2002 recession, Washington’s economy held up longer than most of the nation, but we’re quickly catching up now,” said Employment Security Commissioner Karen Lee.

Total non-agricultural jobs in Washington in November were down 22,400 over the same time in 2007, a 0.8 percent decrease. nationally, jobs declined by 1.4 percent over the past year.