Richland Real Estate Blog

Kadlec Hospital in Richland, named after the first man to die there, strangely enough, (Lt. Col. Harry R. Kadlec) is expanding. So they’ve purchased a large block of commercial space just a couple blocks away from the main campus.

I don’t know if it’s good news or bad news that the hospital has been close to 90% occupancy at times over the past year. On the one hand, it shows we’re a growing community. On the other hand, a lot of people have been sick or had accidents. For those who had a choice, and they chose Kadlec, it speaks to the superior care they feel they’ll receive. But in some cases, wouldn’t that be something you’d rather not have to make a choice about?

The TEA Party has been active in the Tri-Cities for about a year now, but they’ll have company starting tomorrow. March 13 is the national kick-off of the Coffee Party and the Tri-Cities group is meeting in Richland. It’ll happen from 1 to 3 pm at Howard Amon Park and, yes, coffee will be served.

What’s the Coffee Party?

Here’s what the Coffee Party is, according to the national web site’s Mission Statement:

The Coffee Party Movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government. We recognize that the federal government is not the enemy of the people, but the expression of our collective will, and that we must participate in the democratic process in order to address the challenges that we face as Americans. As voters and grassroots volunteers, we will support leaders who work toward positive solutions, and hold accountable those who obstruct them.

The local organizer is a guy named Timothy Vaden, and he’s explained to the Herald that the Coffee Party is non-partisan and not affiliated with the Democratic Party. If memory serves, the folks at the TEA Party made similar statements about not being affiliated with the Republican Party.

The city of Richland is distributing its annual report for 2009, and chances are you’ve got a copy of it already — or you will soon. But just in case you miss it somehow, download the PDf from us. It’s about 300k, so should be a quick download.

I always like to check out the various stats that are on the last page. Here’s Richland’s 2009 year in numbers.

They’re opening up registration for tours of Hanford! Tomorrow morning at 12:01 am, to be exact. There are two kinds of tours – one takes about five hours and is intense in the amount of coverage it provides. They’ll spend over an hour at the B reactor alone, and they added more attention on the tank farms this year. VERY cool!

The other tour takes less than three hours and focuses only on the B reactor.

Stay up late (or get up REALLY early, last year the longer tour spots were snapped up within twelve hours) and log on to http://www.hanford.gov/page.cfm/HanfordSiteTours right after midnight tonight.

Read the instructions carefully – you need to be a US citizen for one of the tours, and not the other, and you need to present ID with the exact same name as the name you signed up under, too, so now is not the time to try out your new married name (Cari Clooney isn’t going to fly for me, for example).In addition, there is a dress code, and an age limit for both.

I think this’ll be a great addition to Badger Mountain Community Park: a 6,000 square foot water spray area with close to 20 different water features/pieces. If you’ve never enjoyed one of these, they’re pretty fun — and the perfect remedy for a hot, summer day.

I’m assuming the Richland water spray will be somewhat similar to this one:

That’s an old photo (2004) of me and my daughter having a blast at Columbia Park.

The Herald recently reported that the water spray area would be open by June — “if not sooner,” according to Dave Bryant of the Richland Parks Dept. There’ll be no charge to use it.

The City of Richland has been looking for grant money for the Duportail Bridge project since 2008, but they recently learned that the federal stimulus funding won’t be helping.

The city had applied for $27 million of stimulus funds, but just learned that the US Dept. of Transportation didn’t choose Duportail for funding. According to the latest city update:

City staff and consultant team will continue working through the design and environmental phase of the project and is examining ways to construct the project in smaller segment/phases.