The Kennewick City Council is considering selling a 3-acre neighborhood park that has belonged to the city since 1956 to a local hospice nonprofit that wants to build a new headquarters there.
Tri-Cities Chaplaincy has asked the city about buying Yelm Park, at 324 N. Yelm St., to construct a new administrative center, according to the Tri-City Herald's reporting, republished by Yahoo News. The park sits directly across the street from the nonprofit's Cork's Place Kids Grief Center and Hospice House at 2108 W. Entiat Ave., which went through a $3.5 million renovation last year, according to the Herald and Tri-Cities Business News.
The council held a public hearing Tuesday evening, Oct. 6, to gather comments and information on the potential sale, NEWStalk 870 reported. No vote has been taken — the session was limited to discussion and public input, leaving the proposal in an early stage with no firm timeline yet for a council decision.
Why Chaplaincy wants to move
Tri-Cities Chaplaincy currently runs its administrative operations out of a two-story building it constructed in 2011 at Spaulding Business Park near the Richland Wye, but the nonprofit says that space no longer fits its needs. The organization employs roughly 100 people, most of whom work out in the community rather than at a desk, according to the Herald's reporting.
"We have a 55-year history in the Tri-Cities. It's a really good, central location. So we want to bring everything there, if we can," Tri-Cities Chaplaincy CEO Laurie Jackson told the Herald.
Jackson said in a written statement that the nonprofit wants a "serene build that matches the newly remodeled Hospice House," including a walking path and park-like spaces that would be monitored for day use. "We have the funds to move our administration services from the Spaulding Business Park in Richland here to this site in Kennewick and build a structure that is inviting, serene, and of high-quality," she said. If the plan moves forward, Jackson said the nonprofit intends to sell its Spaulding building.
How the park landed on the table
Yelm Park wasn't on the city's radar for a sale. During a recent evaluation of Kennewick's 39 municipal parks, it wasn't flagged as a high- or medium-priority property for disposal, NEWStalk 870 reported. Discussions only began after Tri-Cities Chaplaincy approached the city directly about buying the site.
The park carries an estimated value of about $535,000, according to NEWStalk 870's reporting. It's unclear from available records how that figure compares to replacement costs for similar green space elsewhere in the city, or what the city would do with proceeds from a sale — questions that weren't addressed at Tuesday's hearing.
What's next
The city has not scheduled a vote on the proposal. It remains unclear whether selling dedicated park land donated to the city seven decades ago would require any process beyond standard council approval — a question current reporting hasn't answered.
Residents who want to weigh in can watch for the item to return to a future council agenda, which the city posts online ahead of meetings. For now, Tuesday's hearing stands as the only formal opportunity on record for public comment, and neither the Herald nor NEWStalk 870 reported specific objections or support voiced by residents at the meeting.
What happens next depends on when — and whether — the proposal returns to a council agenda for a vote. No date has been set.
