A 10,000-square-foot building near the Country Mercantile in Richland is poised to bring new retail or other commercial development to a growing area near Badger Mountain.
A Century 21 Tri-Cities real estate agent ranked No. 1 in his brokerage and in Washington state recently spoke at the agency’s largest annual conference in Las Vegas.
The man who started Bouten Construction immigrated from Belgium as a young boy and went to work building houses with his father at age 13 before eventually starting his own construction company, which celebrates 80 years in business this year.
As many longtime employees begin to reach retirement age, and as some operations and activities at the site ramp up, maintaining and bolstering the Hanford workforce – which numbers more than 11,000 people – is a mission-critical endeavor, officials said.
One out of every 10 people in the Tri-Cities is employed by a job connected to federal funding, whether through the Hanford site, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory or with a subcontractor. This 13,000-person employment cluster’s impact on industries throughout the community remains significant.