SENIOR TIMES • NOVEMBER 2020
NOVEMBER 2020 Volume 8 • Issue 11
KGH on track to become recovery center By Wendy Culverwell editor@tcjournal.biz
Surge in donations prompts Richland thrift store expansion Page 3
ER doc opens urgent care clinic at Columbia Point Page 5
Opening of shopping plaza cause for celebration in 1960 Page 8
MONTHLY QUIZ When Richland, Pasco and Kennewick were the only high schools in the Tri-Cities, for a longtime their intra-city rivalries were the biggest sporting events in the Tri-Cities. Who dominated the 1955 football rivalries between the three schools?
Answer, Page 9
The former Kennewick General Hospital will become a recovery center serving clients with drug addiction and mental health issues under a plan approved in late October by the Kennewick Public Hospital District Board. The district’s board of commissioners accepted a two-part feasibility study that lays the foundation to convert the hospital on Auburn Street into what it calls the Two Rivers Rehabilitation Center during its Oct. 29 meeting. Benton and Franklin counties helped fund the $50,000 study. The Tri-Cities is the only community of size in Washington that lacks a recovery and detox center. The Benton Franklin Recovery Coalition led by Michele Gerber has spent the last two years promoting the need to help people with substance abuse disorders and mental health issues in their own hometown. Accepting the study is the first step to converting the old KGH into a 76bed recovery center and detoxification facility. The plan gives the hospital district a fresh mission following its 2017 bankruptcy. It lost most of its physical assets, including the hospital on Auburn Street, now known as Trios Women’s and Children’s Hospital, after being overwhelmed by more than $200 million in debt. The private company now called LifePoint acquired Trios and, separately, Lourdes Health in Pasco. uKGH, Page 7
PLEASE DELIVER TO CURRENT OCCUPANT Senior Times 8524 W. Gage Blvd., #A1-300 Kennewick, WA 99336
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Courtesy Sana Behavioral Health Sana Behavioral Hospital, a 16-bed psychiatric facility for those 55 and over, will open in the spring at 7319 W. Hood Place, near the Tri-Cities Cancer Center, in Kennewick.
New in-patient facility to offer senior-specific psychiatric care By Wendy Culverwell editor@tcjournal.biz
The Tri-Cities isn’t often the second location for any growing chain. But it is for a Salt Lake City-based joint venture that is building psychiatric hospitals for seniors in the West. Sana Behavioral Health will open a $2.8 million, 16-bed hospital at 7319 W. Hood Place next spring. It will be the second of five Sana senior psychiatric hospitals being built in the West, said Ryan Eggleston, president of Sana Medical Group. The Kennewick hospital will employ 44, including medical and psychiatric physicians, an administrator, director of nursing and others. The 16,518-square-foot, singlestory building is just north of the Tri-Cities
Cancer Center in a cluster of medical facilities. The first Sana Behavioral Hospital opened in April in Prescott, Arizona. A third is planned in Hurricane, Utah, and the fourth and fifth will be built in 2021 in Arizona and Colorado, respectively. The Sana model targets underserved, tertiary markets, meaning rural areas. A Las Vegas-area edition operates under a different structure. The Kennewick hospital will be a twin to the newly opened Prescott Sana hospital. It’s no accident Sana selected the TriCities for its second location. Eggleston said demographics, population size, Medicare data and existing access to uSANA, Page 10
New lease on old Herald building good news for downtown Kennewick By Wendy Culverwell editor@tcjournal.biz
The former Tri-City Herald building, the largest and newest privately-owned office building in downtown Kennewick, has new tenants. Vivid Learning Systems, owned by private equity-backed Health & Safety Institute, leased space at 333 W. Canal Drive, a decision that promises to bring more professionals to downtown Kennewick and bolster the fortunes of businesses in the city’s historic heart. In a separate deal, a third-party distributor for Amazon leased 13,000 square feet of warehouse space attached to the office building. The Herald building is owned by D9 Contracting, a family-owned drywall business that bought the property from McClatchy, the Herald’s parent company, in 2019.
Vivid provides online safety education programs for employers. It spun out of the U.S. Department of Energy in the late 1990s with a focus on the Hanford site and has been owned by HSI since 2018. HSI in turn is majority-owned by Waud Capital Partners, a $3 billion private equity firm. Vivid leased the space to consolidate the 80-100 local employees who had been crowded in three locations, said Duane Tumlinson, vice president of sales operations. Tumlinson said Vivid wasn’t focused on a particular city, but the Herald building had the space and amenities it needed and was move-in ready. Vivid’s impact won’t be felt until the Covid-19 pandemic is past. Most employees are working from home, though members of its accounting and information technology uTENANTS, Page 4
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