The Reach Museum: Hope springs eternal

The Tri-City Herald’s 2020 Progress Report was published shortly after the REACH Museum closed to the public due to COVID-19. Fast forward one year, and we are now planning for an April 1, 2021, reopening. Much has happened in those 12 months, much hardship and many difficult choices made to ensure that the museum had adequate resources to outlast the impact of a long closure.

Many may not be aware, but as the REACH is a project of the Richland Public Facilities District, it was ineligible for CARES Act funding, which provided federal help to nonprofits and small businesses. We therefore had to rely heavily on many good-hearted people and organizations such as the Reach Foundation and its patrons, Battelle Inc., SCTU, Tri-Cities Industry Kiwanis, Women Helping Women Fund Tri-Cities and our devoted members. With our community’s generosity, we have weathered the worst part of the storm and are now setting our sights for sunnier days.

On April 1, we plan to open with general admission offered on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, and be available for group tours and event rentals on any day of the week with advance booking. At Phase 2 of Healthy Washington — Roadmap for Recovery, we can open our facility at 25% capacity.

We encourage visitors to carefully plan their visit in advance by visiting our website for information as well as signing up for timed tickets when available. The REACH will require visitors above 2 years of age to wear masks, practice social distancing and adhere to all other current health and safety guidelines. We want to make sure your visit is as safe and enjoyable as possible.

On the bright side, our closure created several opportunities. For instance, website development for online learning was fast tracked. Our education team has been busy migrating program content to online platforms. We now offer Virtual Field Trips to students and educators, as well as visitors who may live next door or anywhere around the world. Our Boredom Buster program for students on school break, as well as our signature Screech at the REACH Halloween program were also offered 100% virtual in 2020 with great success.

Spring is now here, and we are excited to begin offering programs on site! Many of them will take place in our Outdoor Learning Area located on our 18-acre property which provides a sampling of the shrub steppe and riparian ecosystems of the Hanford Reach National Monument and provides hands-on, interactive activities that are fun while teaching important themes like irrigated agriculture, hops cultivation, local animals, native plants and land formation.

Thanks to grants from the Benton County Historical Preservation Fund and the City of Richland’s Parks and Recreation, we will be upgrading outdoor signage early this spring. Old, faded panels will be replaced with vibrant UV-protected signage to enhance the learning experience. And be sure to check out our newly designed Land Irrigated exhibition, which tells the story of industry leaders in the agricultural community of Greater Franklin County and was funded by Benton County Public Facilities District.

In closing, we want to express our most sincere thanks to our members who renewed their memberships, and to our new members who joined—even though our facility was shuttered. You, along with generous donors, answered our call for help at a time when it was most needed. Thank you for taking such great care of the REACH.

We still have lots of work to do in 2021 to rebuild our financial base, grow our earned income and recapture our visitation. But we remain hopeful and with our community’s continued support, all things are possible.

This story was originally published April 30, 2021 at 12:31 AM with the headline "The Reach Museum: Hope springs eternal."