Decades-old Columbia Park buildings being reduced to rubble. What’s happening there?
Eight aging buildings in Columbia Park, including those at the long defunct west-end campground, will be demolished by Christmas.
After decades of supporting recreational activities along the 5-mile shoreline of the Columbia River, some of the structures in recent years had become a site for illegal activities and homeless campers.
“They’re kind of an attracted nuisance,” said Nick Farline, Kennewick’s parks, recreation and facilities director. “The project was deemed as high importance for both the city and U.S. Army Corps.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers owns Columbia Park and leases it to the city to maintain.
The city has poured money into revitalizing the east end of the park, including refurbishing the Playground of Dreams and working on plans with the Corps to build a 3-acre dog park.
But some park buildings are decrepit and haven’t been used for programs in decades, said Farline.
C. Watts Trucking and Excavation began tearing down three buildings this week, starting first with the largest and most prominent — the older parks and recreation headquarters at the Edison Street entrance to the park, off Highway 240.
The building served as a maintenance storage area for years, including a place to park the J&S Dreamland Express — that memorializes a fallen Washington State Patrol trooper.
The 90-foot train, which runs on tires rather than tracks and carries thousands of kids and families on tours of Kennewick’s shoreline every summer, had to find a new place to park when the city condemned the building as structurally unsafe in 2018.
Next, crews will destroy the nearby ASA Softball Building and Atomic Ducks clubhouse buildings. Then, they will head west to tackle five buildings in the old campground.
A ninth structure planned for removal is an old gazebo in Layton Park.
The demolition is expected to cost about $117,000 and should finish by Dec. 20, said the parks department’s projects coordinator Rochelle Strader.
She said crews had to remove or contain asbestos in some cases before the walls came down.
The Columbia Park Trail roadway is expected to remain open during the work and the demolition sites will be fenced off, she said.
Columbia Park campground
The now overgrown campground area on the west end of the 400-acre park opened in the 1960s and operated until 2003.
City officials shut it down after deciding it would be too expensive to replace its failing septic system. The winding, narrow asphalt roadway is now popular with hikers and bikers.
In 2021, a homeless man reportedly dropped a lighter inside one of the vacant campground buildings, setting it ablaze and the fire spread. City staff spent time boarding up the entrances again to the structures to prevent squatters from getting in.
The old structures being torn down include an office, shower and three restrooms.
Atomic Ducks Dive Club
The Atomic Ducks Dive Club — known for finding sunken “treasures” and its underwater pumpkin-carving contests — occupied one of the two cinder block buildings east of Edison for 30 years.
The club was established in the 1960s and is among the oldest dive clubs in the U.S., according to Tri-City Herald archives.
The building served as a meeting space up until around 2002, when members moved out because of the growing cost of the utilities and insurance.
Atomic Ducks had a unique agreement with the city which allowed it to use the building rent-free in exchange for dive services to cleanup areas.
At Layton Park, the gazebo at 523 South Date Street is in poor structural shape and will be demolished, Farline said. He said there are no plans to replace the structure, which hasn’t been used much in recent years.
This story was originally published November 29, 2024 at 2:42 PM.
