A hilly pasture near Twin Bridges Road in West Richland is being auctioned for residential development.

At nearly 125 acres, the Twin Bridges property could rival the scale of The Heights at Red Mountain Ranch. The Heights is a new development just beginning to take shape on 148 acres of farmland near Rupert Road and its future connection with Keene Road.

The Heights is being developed by Aho Construction on land owned by Frank Tiegs and would add up to 563 homes in multiple phases. A spokesman for Aho confirmed grading has begun to prepare the site for future development. Construction of utilities will begin by late April.

The Twin Bridges property, which is on Harrington Road, property could support nearly 500 single-family homes at four lots per acre.

Musser Bros. Auctions will sell it in three parcels. The Benton County Assessor values it at $330,000.

The land is zoned for a mix of medium-and low-density residential development and some agriculture.

The two developments together could add more than 1,000 homes in West Richland, continuing a trend that has added thousands of new residents. The city had nearly 15,000 residents in 2018, according to Census Bureau estimates, about 3,000 more than in 2010.

And the city’s demographics are enticing to builders. The median household income is nearly $93,000 and almost 83 percent of homes are occupied by owners, according to Census.

There are roughly 4,800 single-family homes in the city limits, according to the Benton County Assessor’s Office.

The Harrington Road site slopes north toward the Columbia Irrigation District main canal and the Yakima River on the far northern edge of West Richland. It is inside the city, a noteworthy selling point.

“There’s just not that many developable parcels inside city limits,” said Scott Musser, who will conduct the auction at
1 p.m. March 19 at the property on behalf of the owner, Matson Development LLC.

Musser said the location could make it an attractive neighborhood for Hanford workers. Twin Bridges Road intersects Highway 240 to the west of Richland’s Horn Rapids area.

The Twin Bridges site is owned by brothers who Musser said intended to build homes on one-acre lots that would have drawn water from wells and relied on septic systems to handle wastewater. The site is not currently served by municipal water systems.

When they couldn’t get the approval for a special use, they hired an engineer to evaluate what it would cost to bring in utilities.

The price tag is about $2.5 million for a system Musser said will connect to the loop that will serve The Heights.

Bringing in utilities should not be a barrier to development.

“It’s more affordable than it sounds,” Musser said.

The land is currently used as dryland pasture and has never been developed. All three parcels have access to North Harrington Road, which follows the Yakima River along West Richland’s northern boundary.