City of Walla Walla to purchase Tausick Way property for future affordable housing

A vacant lot off Tausick Way in east Walla Walla will be the future site of an affordable housing development.

The 6.4 acre parcel was foreclosed in the 1930s and transferred to the county as a tax title property in the 1940s because of overdue property taxes.

In recent years, the county-owned property has been home to gravel piles and spent Christmas trees collected by the Scouts for a yearly fundraiser, but those uses weren't to the space's full potential, said Walla Walla County Commissioner Todd Kimball.

"We complain about not having enough low-income housing all the time in the county and the city of Walla Walla, and this, it's a really great location for housing development," Kimball said.

The city of Walla Walla agreed. The city and county have been taking steps to ready this site for development for about 7 years and in May, the city signed an offer to purchase the property for the direct cost, about $24,000.

The property is across the street from the Mill Creek Sportsplex and down the road from Walla Walla Community College. It's also on existing Valley Transit bus routes and on an access street with utilities.

"If kids are residing there, you've got access to parks. It is an opportunity for student housing in close proximity to Walla Walla Community College. It's just in an area that I think is really prime for housing," City Manager Elizabeth Chamberlain said.

Kimball said he initially saw the unused property as an opportunity for the county to earn revenue. When he learned it was a tax title property, the county started looking at the opportunity to sell it to the city and add to the housing supply.

That involved looking at records going back to the 1940s to determine the direct cost. The county also performed an environmental site assessment on the property, which found no remediation needs. The cost of that assessment, $19,700, makes up the bulk of the direct cost.

With the city purchasing the land, state law requires it then be transferred to a housing authority or nonprofit, also for direct cost, to be developed into affordable housing.

Affordable housing is a development where at least 25% of units are occupied by low-income residents with rent that is affordable.

Because the property was owned by the county, it was previously zoned public reserve. The land's zoning was updated in 2018, Chamberlain said, to multifamily residential. The city was "anticipating that at some point we could maybe see this property redeveloped," she said.

Since signing the offer letter in May, the city and county have been working through the steps of transferring the title and closing on the property.

What happens next is up to the city. Chamberlain said the city is currently going through the surplus process with a different property at Fifth Avenue and Sumach Street. For that property, the city did a request for proposal process and is reviewing the proposals it received. The proposals will be reviewed by the Housing Ad-Hoc Committee and a decision will be made by the City Council.

"We're still figuring out what steps and process we would want to go through to see about the (Tausick Way) property being developed," Chamberlain said. "‘How do we want to see it developed?' and ‘who do we want to work with to develop it?' are really the two questions."

"I think the commissioners are really happy that we're able to hopefully provide some middle income and low income housing for residents of the city and the county, which has been a real sticking point since I became a commissioner 10 years ago," Kimball said. "It's been a topic of conversation that entire time, and before, so I think the opportunity for 100 or 120 units on that property is pretty exciting."

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.