Kennewick Real Estate Blog

Betcha didn’t know this: Kennewick is the Slurpee® Capital of the World.

It’s true: The 7-11 store at 3606 W. Clearwater Avenue has been the No. 1 seller of slurpees on earth for six of the past nine months. And they were the No. 1 slurpee seller in the U.S. in 2007.

The owner, Don Mariotto, tells the Herald that he’s starting a campaign to secure the No. 1 worldwide spot over a 12-month period. He’s giving away free t-shirts:

The first 300 people who buy a 40-ounce Slurpee from each of the six Tri-Cities stores gets a free T-shirt with the campaign logo on it.

The campaign is designed to promote all six stores because of new equipment at the other stores and continued growth of local Slurpee sales — the Tri-Cities ranks 23rd of 762 markets in the U.S.

Who knew that Slurpees were so popular in the Tri-Cities??!! Crazy stuff.

Anyway, if you want to visit the No. 1 Slurpee seller, here’s a Google map to their Kennewick store:

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Kennewick is getting a new roundabout behind the Columbia Center Mall.

Turns out that project is going to start on Monday, and the City of Kennewick says drivers should use Grandridge Blvd. to avoid delays. The roundabout is going in at the intersection of Gage Blvd. and Center Parkway — which will remain open for most of the project, but it’ll probably be really slooooooow.

You’ve been warned.

Kennewick schools got a nice boost this week: Kamiakin High School ranked #731 on a Newsweek magazine survey of the top 1,300 high schools in the U.S. Congrats Kamiakin Braves!

Newsweek list is based on this ranking formula:

“…the number of Advanced Placement, Intl. Baccalaureate and/or Cambridge tests taken by all students at a school in 2007 divided by the number of graduating seniors.”

You can see the Kamiakin listing in the 700s on Newsweek.com, and also learn more about how the high school rankings were put together and what the stats mean.

I should also mention that Pasco High made the list, too, at #857. No other Tri-Cities high schools are on the list.

but they still do a great job at just detailing, too!

I have a friend who used to sell cars, and he always gets his cars detailed at Sunshine Polishing in Kennewick. I tried them out the other day and the manager, James, shuttled me to my destination (talk about service!) after I had dropped off my car. We were talking during the drive and I discovered that they’ve decided to delve into auto service as well; oil changes, etc. I asked James if he worried about diluting their product. They’re known for their excellent detailing, but if they started adding auto service to the mix, did they run the risk of people saying, “Well, now they’re spreading themselves too thin.” ? James said the same guys who have been polishing and detailing for years are still doing what THEY know best, and the auto service technicians are doing what THEY do best, so there should be no negative results as they expand their services.

My car is three years old. During those three years I’ve driven countless clients around and my kids have aged from 3 to 6 and 7 to 10. Talk about wear and tear on a car! Imagine your car in similar circumstances. Now imagine you’ve been the only one to clean the interior with a hand-held vacuum and some paper towels and the local touchless car wash handles the exterior. Got that picture in your head? Good. Now see what Sunshine Polishing did - oh, and I had them change the oil, too!

While a lot of Tri-Cities residents are unhappy with the roundabout at the intersection of Steptoe Street, Columbia Park Trail, and Hwy. 240 (see WSDOT photo at right), the Kennewick City Council has voted to add another roundabout right behind the Columbia Center Mall.

The new Kennewick roundabout will be located at the rear of the mall, at the intersection of Gage Boulevard and Center Parkway. Work will start there in June and the roundabout should be complete by September … so, I’ll be finding another way to get into the Columbia Center Mall this summer.

Kennewick’s Public Works Director, Peter Beaudry, told KNDU last week that a roundabout will help reduce delays at the intersection and make it safer:

“Roundabouts do have less traffic collisions then [sic] you experience at a traffic signal and the type of collisions that occur at a roundabout are much less severe.”

I’m not in the roundabouts-are-bad camp; they’re not a problem at all when people know how to use them and drive safely through them. But I try to avoid the roundabout at Grandridge Avenue and Center Parkway whenever possible, because too many drivers fly through that thing at 30 mph or higher, and it’s not safe at that speed. The idea to put a roundabout behind the mall won’t be a problem, as long as people drive carefully through it. We’ll see how that goes….