The Port of Pasco is running on all cylinders.
The Tri-Cities Airport recently posted its second consecutive year of passenger growth last year with more than 949,000 people – a record 9% growth.
Construction of the Darigold plant at the port’s Reimann Industrial Park is ongoing and one of the dairy cooperative’s biggest partners is planning to set up shop there. Other companies are also eyeing the remaining parcels or other port properties.
Four months after Lamb Weston’s abrupt closure of its processing plant in Connell, the port secured $100,000 in state funding to begin identifying potential industrial sites in the community so it can help the town recruit a new large private employer.
And port officials have no intention of letting up the gas, even as its leadership is transforming with the upcoming retirement of longtime executive director Randy Hayden in March, and the recent retirement of long-serving port commissioner Jim Klindworth.
The port’s newest strategic plan, approved in mid-December, outlines big goals and benchmarks for the next five years. On one page of the document, readers are invited to imagine by 2030 that the airport offers direct flights to Dallas-Fort Worth, that the Osprey Pointe development is built out and that the port is awarded the state’s first permit for a small modular reactor to generate power.
While acknowledging that some of those wish-list items are aspirational and not guaranteed, port leadership stands by its commitment to keep the economic momentum going.
“Whenever you lose people, you go, ‘Oh my gosh,’” Commissioner Vicki Gordon told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business. “But the professionalism of our whole staff is how we’re successful. I’m really looking forward to moving in the right direction.”
The port covers the entirety of the city of Pasco and Franklin County as far north as Connell. It owns more than 3,000 acres of land, which includes the airport, a wharf on the Columbia River, several business industrial parks and other properties. Its overarching purpose is to promote economic development and create jobs.
The strategic plan was developed by the port commissioners and its staff throughout 2024. The port is used to setting high goals. Commissioner Jean Ryckman said the previous plan also was ambitious.
“If you set your sights too low, you don’t get anywhere,” she said.
Energy
One of the more aspirational of the port’s goals is connected to energy. While the Port of Benton and Energy Northwest have recently partnered with Amazon to develop small modular reactors (SMRs), the Port of Pasco has not yet taken concrete steps for a similar project.
Executive Director Randy Hayden said the port’s energy initiatives may not result in SMRs on port property, but rather as partnerships with entities with that infrastructure, such as the Port of Benton and Energy Northwest. Recruiting other power-generating businesses to the region is another potential strategy.
The reality is the port needs to be able to secure adequate power for industry, Hayden said, and that’s becoming more difficult.
“We have just had a lot of individuals reach out to us and they’re looking for 100-megawatt loads,” he said. “If you get much beyond 10-megawatt demand, it gets into having to be reviewed by (Bonneville Power Administration).”
Ryckman added that the port’s energy efforts also are focused on lobbying to keep the Lower Snake River Dams in place to generate power.
Tri-Cities Airport
The Tri-Cities Airport just keeps smashing records and its record-breaking growth has been a point of pride for the port.
Airport officials credited the new and expanded airline routes as part of the reason for the overall uptick in passengers. Six airlines now provide flights from the airport’s five gates.
And the possibility of adding flights between the Tri-Cities and Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas is within reach, port officials said.
The Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco. | Courtesy Port of Pasco
The U.S. Department of Transportation awarded a $750,000 grant to the port in 2023 to establish the route. American Airlines, the airport’s newest carrier, has one of its hubs in Dallas-Fort Worth and has already increased its flights to Phoenix from the Tri-Cities less than a year after putting down roots.
“That’ll happen before 2030,” Gordon said of the Dallas-Fort Worth route.
Other recently expanded routes include Avelo Airlines increasing its flights to Burbank, California, from two to four per week; and Alaska Airlines starting a nonstop route to Los Angeles.
Less than 10 years after the last major renovation, the airport’s next expansion is beginning, initially starting with adding jet bridges to serve two of the gates and expanding the baggage system before moving on to expand the ticketing area, car rental kiosks and add two more gates.
The port also wants airfield operations to reach a point where government subsidies are no longer necessary.
Osprey Pointe
Despite the port’s successes, there is one effort where it has struggled: Osprey Pointe.
It’s been years since the port announced plans to develop the 55-acre site into a mix of commercial and residential properties. That effort has been stymied by everything from partners backing out and state and local code and zoning issues to the Covid-19 pandemic. Currently there is only a single office building on the parcel – half of it occupied by the port’s offices – with the rest essentially as parkland.
“We were hoping we’d have condos on the waterfront we could move into by now,” Gordon said.
The strategic plan calls on the port to evaluate progress on Osprey Pointe’s development with its current partner, JMS Construction, and “determine if a course correction is required.”
Port officials said events out of anyone’s control have ground Osprey Pointe’s progress to a standstill. The first phase of the development agreement with JMS was supposed to be completed in November, but Hayden said that can be extended for a year and there are signs dirt could start moving this spring at last.
“We remain optimistic that the project will move forward,” Hayden said.
Fresh faces
Osprey Pointe and the port’s other initiatives will be moving forward without Hayden and a similarly long-tenured commissioner at the helm.
Hayden is set to retire at the end of March after more than 25 years with the port, the last 13 of those years as its top executive.
Commissioner Jim Klindworth of District 3, which covers the northern bulk of the port, retired on Dec. 31, 2024. He served as a commissioner for 37 years after first being elected to the position in 1987.
Ryckman told the Journal that at first she lost sleep over having to replace two people who had made such an impact on the port and for so long.
Adam Lincoln
| Courtesy city of PascoRyckman and Gordon have hired Adam Lincoln, the former manager for the city of Pasco, to take over for Hayden. At the end of January, their nomination to fill Klindworth’s seat until the next general election, Hans Engelke of Mesa, participated in his first port meeting as a commissioner.
Engelke and Lincoln are quality adds to the port, coming from a good pool of candidates, Ryckman said.
“I’m sleeping again,” she said.
Ryckman and Gordon said that so many of the other port executives who have contributed to its overall success are the main reason they expect progress to continue.
Hayden said he’s 100% confident that the port will continue to move forward after he steps away, whether that’s guiding the airport’s continued growth, breaking ground at Osprey Pointe or responding to emergent challenges such as the Lamb Weston plant closure in Connell.
“I don’t think we’ll miss a step,” he said.