West Richland Real Estate Blog

Baum’s Chocolates will have a new home in early 2010 — a new home in West Richland. KEPR reported the move a few days ago, saying the store will be moving to the old GESA location right on Van Giesen Avenue.

“The big advantage of moving to West Richland is better exposure from the street. We won’t be hidden quite as much as back in this corner,” says owner Rick Vance.

The story says Baum’s will open in West Richland after Valentine’s Day.

“We don’t have much crime” is always one of the first things I say to people who ask what I love about West Richland and why we’ve decided to settle here. And I’ve seen some reports (and blogged about them) that tell how low West Richland’s crime rate is.

Now, the West Richland Police Dept. has launched an online map that shows crimes that have happened within the city limits.

That’s a screenshot of incidents between November 1st and November 30th. (You can click for a larger version.) You’ll notice that I’ve unchecked the “PUBLIC” category from the left column and you should probably uncheck some other categories, too, to get a real snapshot of actual crimes. (The “ALARM” category, for example, shows police responses to false alarms, which don’t count as actual crimes.) You can move your mouse over any of the lettered incidents to learn more about what happened.

According to this KEPR-TV story, Police chief Layne Erdman says the online crime map isn’t costing the city any more money.

You can reach the West Richland Crime Map online at this URL:

http://map.citizenserviceportal.com/default.aspx?agency=wrpd

Note that it may not work with all browsers and you may have to download Microsoft’s Silverlight software.

File Police Reports Online

Also new is an online tool for sending reports and information to the West Richland police department. Obviously you don’t use this for emergencies, but if you want to report things like traffic problems/violations, theft, or malicious mischief, you can use this URL:

http://report.citizenserviceportal.com/Report.aspx?agency=wrpd

I have a feeling this may be both helpful for the PD in that they’ll get more information and reports from the public, from people who may not have otherwise called or visited the station … but it also may create a lot of nuisance/busy work for the department. We’ll see.

In any case, I think these are very cool developments. Hats off to the West Richland PD.

This one kinda snuck up on me, what with all the travel and craziness happening in my life lately: The annual Veteran’s Day Parade in West Richland is this Saturday. Yikes. They say it’s the biggest and best Vet’s Day Parade in all of Eastern Washington, so if you’ve never been, why not check out this year’s edition? Looks like the weather will be pretty good — bit chilly, but not wet.

The parade starts at 9:30 am at the Van Giesen/Grosscup intersection, and will head east along Van Giesen into the downtown area before ending at the City Hall complex on 38th avenue. There’s always a lot of floats, bands, horses, cars, and so forth — and they’re usually tossing out candy for the kids along the parade route, too.

You can stick around, too, for the awards ceremony and chili feed after the parade at Flat Top Park.

Road Closures

Even if you’re not gonna watch the parade, be aware that Van Giesen Street will be closed for a few hours on Saturday morning.

• From 62nd to Grosscup, closed between 7 and 11 am.
• From Grosscup to 38th, closed between 9:30 and approximatey 11 am.

Don’t say you weren’t warned…

(That photo above is one that we took at the 2006 Veteran’s Day Parade.)

UPDATE, DECEMBER 29: Please see this post, Club 24 Fitness opening next week in West Richland, for the latest information about Club 24 Fitness in West Richland.
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This is good news: Club 24 Fitness is coming to West Richland, perhaps as soon as next month! If you’ve been in the Yoke’s/Paradise Place shopping area on Bird Hill, you may have seen the signs in the windows:

From what I could tell, the fitness club is taking up the spaces that used to be occupied by three separate businesses. So it should have a nice amount of space for equipment and such.

The Club 24 web site only says “December 2009″ about a grand opening date for the West Richland location. Perfect. Just in time for everyone (like me) who’ll surely be over-eating during the holidays.

There’s no information on their site about pricing at the West Richland location, but the Richland facility pricing runs $25 per month with a year-long contract, or $35 per month with no contract. All of the Club 24 locations have that same pricing, so our local one might, too. Unfortunately, there’s also a one-time $69 “membership fee.” Ugh. I much prefer the fitness clubs that skip the membership thing and just charge a monthly fee (like River Walk Fitness in Richland does). But I may still give some thought to signing up at our local Club 24 when it opens.

Politics is a bit outside of the zone of stuff we like to write about here on the West Richland Real Estate blog, but I don’t think we need to avoid it altogether, right? You’ve probably already received your ballots in the mail, and they need to be postmarked by August 18. So time’s running out to learn about the candidates. The Herald is trying to help with a couple articles that have short bios of the folks running for city council:

West Richland City Council Position 4 – Mark Hanneman (incumbent), Susan Fahey, & Richard Bloom

West Richland City Council Position 1 – Angie Tyree, Craig Sloughter, & Brent Gerry

There’s a not a lot of depth in there, but it’s better than not knowing anything about the people who are running for office this year.

And they’re off! Just as promised, the repaving of Blue Heron Blvd. began bright and early this morning. It’s kinda strange to see so many cars pulled around and parked on the side streets, and BHB itself totally empty … except for when all the heavy equipment comes by, as you see below.

Chukar Drive — it’s your turn tomorrow.