Construction on south side of mountain points to more growth

Signs of new construction on the south side of Badger Mountain—including

a new service station and convenience store that will include a fast-food

chicken restaurant—signal more growth coming to the planned development that’s

been years in the making.

Badger Mountain South’s owner and developer Nor Am

Investments has an end-goal of building 5,000 household units, comprised of

homes and apartments, filling nearly 1,500 acres in the high-growth area

of Richland at the “back side” of Badger Mountain in the next 18 years.

Hundreds of homes have sprouted up in recent years and

more are coming to the outskirts of Richland city limits, near the border of

West Richland, east of Interstate 82 off Dallas Road.

“The city of Richland is very pleased to see the progress

and development that is taking place in the Badger Mountain South community. As

of July 1, there were 553 permitted

residential units, 276 of which are associated with the apartments currently

under construction. Additionally, a development known as Goose Ridge

Estates has recently received preliminary plat approval for approximately 103

residential units,” said Kerwin Jensen, Richland’s development services

director.

The

$725,000 service station and convenience store now under construction is set to

open this fall and plans are in the works for a mini-storage business on the

west side of Dallas Road.

The

76 service station will be at 5151 Trowbridge Blvd. at the corner of Dallas

Road. The 4,000-square-foot building will feature a modern façade, a drive-thru

coffee shop and a Chester’s restaurant.

The

Alabama-based fast-food chicken franchise is known for its bone-in fried

chicken, boneless wings, chicken tenders and several sides. Entrepreneur

magazine ranked the franchise No. 110 on its top 500 list. In 2018,

Chester’s operated 1,192 franchises. It often partners with convenience stores,

travel centers, truck stops and supermarket delis, according to its website.

The

service station is owned by Ajsa LLC, based in Kennewick, which also owns gas

stations in Pasco, Richland, Walla Walla and Burbank.

Quality

Backhoe Services in Pasco and Rapid Service of Spanaway are the contractors for

the project.

The

service station is expected to open in mid-October and will be the second

retail location at the master-planned community. Country Mercantile opened a

second store on Ava Way in 2015.

Original vision

The original plan put the development’s completion at

2030, but following a slow start, the revised date is now 2037.

The developer’s representative, Dan Bruchman of

Windermere Group One in Richland, expects it will be completed well before

that.

“We actually re-upped a 20-year entitlement so we have

18 years left, and at the rate that we’re growing now, we will actually hit the

5,000 housing units far before the entitlement expires. Now we literally can’t

get them constructed quickly enough,” he said.

It’s an about-face for the pace of growth in the

community with a vision of “residential neighborhoods that provide a variety of

housing types, styles and densities to serve a broad spectrum of incomes, ages,

and life stages.”

This includes higher-density housing, such as the $43.7 million apartment complex that got underway earlier this year along Bella Coola Lane. Copper Mountain Apartments will contain about 280 units intended for low-income tenants.

Single-family homes in Badger Mountain South originally

faced stringent restrictions on aesthetics, with garages facing an alley

instead of the street. It was thought these guidelines, along with other

limitations, were the reason for the lagging development seen about five years

into the first phase. The city eventually removed some of the restrictions.

Now, about 300 single-family homes are completed, with

another 178 lots targeted for completion, and the start of new home

construction beginning this fall. The new homes will be part of the West

Village and West Vineyard neighborhoods.

Future West Village homes are intended to be listed by

spring and summer 2020, totaling about 131 lots, with another 110 lots ready

before the end of next year, Bruchman said.

Badger Mountain South is an “open plat” community, which

allows any private party or homebuilder to buy lots there.

“There’s such a backlog of builders,” Bruchman said.

Some currently represented include New Tradition,

Viking, Prodigy and Hammerstrom. There are about 1,000 acres remaining for

development, and the density of a builder’s footprint mostly correlates with

what it buys when lots come available after infrastructure improvements, like

sewer and water access.

“It’s just a matter of what they have in their war

chest, as far as land acquisition at the time the phases come on as far as the

size of the bite they take,” Bruchman said.

With homes, come schools

In addition to the home projects, the Richland School

District owns 53 acres within the community, with plans to build an elementary

school on the site. The future school project was included in a

$99 million bond measure approved by voters in 2017.

“Its construction is tentatively scheduled to begin in

the next several years depending on enrollment growth,” said Ty Beaver,

spokesman for the Richland School District.

This would be the district’s 12th elementary school.

Students living in the Badger Mountain South neighborhood currently attend

White Bluffs Elementary School.

The Kennewick School District also owns 14 acres

within the Richland development, with the intention of eventually adding a

school there also.

Amon Creek Elementary was the first school to open

within the Kennewick district’s boundaries that was also within Richland city

limits.

“We have no immediate plans to build on this property

until more housing is built. Our current assessment, based on information we

received from the city, suggests that our next school should be built along the

Bob Olson Parkway. We have not determined the final site of elementary school

No. 18 that was included in the 2019 bond that voters approved in

February. The current timeline has it opening sometime between 2022 and 2025,”

said Robyn Chastain, Kennewick district spokeswoman.

A park and places to worship

A

30-acre park is also in the “foreseeable future” and would include

multi-purpose athletic fields, creating another large park in Richland that

would be about two-thirds the size of Howard Amon Park.

Nor

Am Investments said the company is master planning the fields with the Richland

Parks Department and the Richland School District.

Directly

adjacent to the planned park and Richland school sites is the future location

of a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stake center.

Bruchman

said the stake center will be on the corner of Trowbridge Boulevard and Bella

Coola Lane, on land purchased for $600,000.

Additionally,

Bruchman said land at Ava Way and Bellaview Avenue was purchased for $367,000

and is intended for a future Sikh temple.

The

construction timeline for both worship centers is still pending.

Future progress

Kadlec is expected to be an anchor tenant for the 43-acre

neighborhood considered a “wellness campus.” The Richland health care provider

owns a five-acre parcel but has no immediate plans for development, according

to Kadlec.

Future development of the wellness campus is expected to

begin next fall, and will include residential units intended for active adults

and retirees, falling in line with the master-planned community’s vision to

include housing options across all life stages.

“Badger Mountain South is one of the fastest growing areas

within the Richland city limits and this development has added a significant

amount of revenue to the city’s tax base,” Jensen said.

Bruchman said there are multiple commercial opportunities

in Badger Mountain South still available immediately, with more on the way.

Zoning varies for the commercial lots, which total about

200 acres, including about 84 acres along Dallas Road and I-82 zoned

by the city as C-1 for “areas which primarily provide retail products and

services for the convenience of nearby neighborhoods with minimal impact to the

surrounding residential area.”

Other newly-constructed commercial lots along Dallas and

Trowbridge are expected to be available for sale this fall.

Bruchman said the developer holds

letters of intent for retail businesses intending to come to Badger Mountain

South, but cannot yet disclose any specifics until a purchase and sale

agreement is in place.