Kennewick Real Estate Blog

It’s been about a month since the last general Kennewick business roundup, so here’s what’s been going on lately around town.

• Kennewick Cycle & Fitness is now open at 131 Vista Way. The store sells bikes and bike gear, as well as other fitness equipment. They’re open seven days a week, too.
• Threads, a consignment store focusing on clothing, is now open at 201 N. Edison St. The store is closed on Sundays.
• Sterling’s Restaurant will open a Kennewick location soon at 3200 W. Clearwater Avenue. It’ll feature the same menu as the popular Richland location that’s been open for 26 years.

If you have Kennewick business news to pass along, please let us know about it!

Congratulations to Kennewick’s Canyon Lakes Golf Course, which just earned a rating of 4.5 stars from Golf Digest magazine. Here’s what it looks like on the magazine’s web site:

That tells golfers that Canyon Lakes is among the best courses you’ll find anywhere! It’s the only course in Eastern Washington to get a 4.5 rating.

I gave up golf several years ago (too frustrating to be so bad for so many years), but Canyon Lakes was always one of my favorite courses to play anywhere. It has some of the most creative and enjoyable holes anywhere, and no doubt that’s why Golf Digest rates it so highly!

Northwest Public Radio did a feature this week on Kennewick’s Infinia Corporation, a company that’s come up with a new way to harness the power of solar energy. Rather than relying on traditional solar panels, Infinia has created what looks like a solar “satellite dish” — the dish follows the sun all day and concentrates the sunlight into power. Pretty cool. Here’s a photo from their web site:

There’s a funny exchange in the radio story about these dishes putting the fear of God into the employees of the bank next door.

“And they actually called us one afternoon and said, ‘Why do you have your death ray pointed at us?’”

Classic. And what an interesting concept Infinia has. Always great to see such innovations coming from local companies.

Been a while since the last update on Kennewick business news, so let’s have at it:

• Hats off to Garland’s Gymnastics for stepping in when another local business shut down. Garland’s has offered to honor any deposits made for birthday parties at Bounce Arena, which shut down in June. My son has been to several birthday parties at Garland’s over the years; they seem to do a nice job.
• Coinstar, the company that puts those coin-counting kiosks in grocery stores and other locations, is moving its customer service operations from Bellevue to Kennewick. (Take that, west siders!) The move should add about 30 jobs in Kennewick.
• Bank of the West is getting too big for its current building on Clearwater Avenue, and will be moving out later this year. Commercial banking stuff will move to Quinault Ave. in Kennewick, and non-commercial banking will relocate to the existing BotW brank on Canal Avenue. The Clearwater branch will be closed by October.
• Dig-N-It Landscaping & Lawn Care is a new landscaping business that’s now open in Kennewick. The address is 1317B N. Edison Place.
• Canyon Lakes Golf Course has been named one of the 18 best golf courses in the Pacific Northwest. The honor appeared in the July issue of Northwest Travel Magazine.

Now we’re all caught up. If you have some Kennewick business news to pass along, contact us with details!

Who knew that an innocent blog post about Kennewick slurpees would bring out Winnipeg’s finest for what turned into a fairly heated argument about a super-cool drink? Seriously, it’s looking like a low-level political campaign in the comments on that post. Crazy.

Anyway, there’s apparently some debate over who gets to call themselves the Slurpee Capital of the World. And the folks at 7-11 corporate haven’t really helped things along, either. So, as best I can tell, here’s the truth:

• Winnipeg, which has multiple 7-11 stores, sells the most Slurpee cups in the world.
• Kennewick, which only has one 7-11, sells the most slurpees in terms of dollar sales.

Well, duh. Of course a city with lots of 7-11s and no other places to get food is going to sell more cups than a city with one 7-11 and lots of nice restaurants. (Cedars, anyone?) Hardly seems fair to compare the sales of several stores against the sales of one, but maybe that’s how they do things in Canada.

Lest those feisty Canucks call me a homer, I’m getting my information from two media sources: one in Winnipeg and one in Kennewick. So there. It’s an apples-and-oranges thing. And a Slurpee thing.

Guess we’ll just have to wait until 2009 and settle this thing once and for all, and hopefully with an equal comparison.