Pasco’s Gesa Stadium is getting $3M in upgrades. What’s changing at the ballpark
Pasco is pitching in more money for improvements to Gesa Stadium.
The improvements are part of a deal the city has reached with Minor League Baseball’s Tri-City Dust Devils and Major League Baseball to bring the stadium up to new MLB player facility standards.
Some of the updates include better field lighting, new backstop safety netting, 30-foot foul poles and new outfield fencing.
Gesa Stadium, at 6200 Burden Boulevard in Pasco, opened in 1995 as Tri-City Stadium for the Tri-City Posse. The team was one of the eight original members of the new independent Western Baseball League.
Then, the Northwest League with its affiliation with Major League Baseball arrived in 2001. And the Tri-City Dust Devils franchise has called the 3,600-seat ballpark home for more than two decades.
So far, the cost of the upgrades is just over $1 million.
The updates are being paid for with a $3 million grant from Washington state and $200,000 from the city.
Pasco already invested $1.9 million to upgrade the facility’s locker rooms, cafeteria and office spaces before the start of the spring baseball season this year.
Also planned is expanded dugout seating, a new video board, updated sound and surveillance systems, new outfield grass and a wall, bigger enclosed batting cages, a batting tunnel space and a female staff locker room.
Pasco awarded a contract for the design improvements to Spokane-based ALSC Architects.
The city has been working for years to improve the stadium. It upgraded fan seating and lighting in 2019 and installed new batting cages in 2021.
In 2023, both home and visiting team clubhouses were remodeled, locker rooms were expanded and an umpire locker room was added.
The city extended the lease for the stadium to the Dust Devils for 20 more years in January.
Food truck plaza
The area around the stadium may soon become a new go-to spot with mobile food vendors.
Tri-Cities businessman Chris Corbin announced in a video posted on Facebook this summer that he plans to open a second location of the wildly successful Summer’s Hub food truck plaza in front of Gesa Stadium.
Corbin told the Tri-City Herald that it could open as soon as early May 2025.
The food truck hub is expected to have 26 truck spots, plus a building with indoor and outdoor seating and a permanent indoor Brady’s Brats and Burgers, the same restaurant inside the Kennewick location.
The video announcement indicates it will be built along Burden Boulevard in front of the stadium. The property is owned by the city of Pasco.
This story was originally published December 13, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
