EDA Grant Helps Washington Industrial Park Achieve 95 Percent Occupancy

World War II sparked a surge of defense activity in southeastern Washington and northeastern Oregon, leaving behind, by war’s end, several unused military facilities. In 1958 the Port of Pasco in Pasco, Washington, acquired one of these facilities — a U.S. Army POW camp — and repurposed it as the Big Pasco Industrial Park.

By the early 2000s, however, the site’s aging, 1940s-era infrastructure was hindering the port’s ability to attract and retain job-creating tenants. The situation was exacerbated in 2017 when runoff from snowmelt damaged roads and railways, preventing the full utilization of the park’s 1.3 million square feet of warehouse and industrial space.

With the support of a $7.1 million EDA Economic Adjustment Assistance (EAA) grant the Port of Pasco undertook an ambitious revitalization and modernization of the 80-year-old site. More than 675,000 square feet of new roads were paved, and thousands of linear feet of infiltration trenches and runoff pipes were installed.

Since the completion of EDA-supported work at the Big Pasco Industrial Park, occupancy of warehouse space has increased from 62 percent to 95 percent, helping generate more than 300 new jobs for the region. Stephen McFadden, the port’s director of economic development and marketing, says the EDA investment enabled increased accessibility of the industrial park’s facilities, leading to the surge in tenancy.

“There wasn’t a grant source out there that would have armed us with the power of this particular EDA award,” says McFadden. “It would have taken many years of small, incremental investments raised from tenant revenue to make these improvements in the absence of EDA funding.”

The Big Pasco Industrial Park is one of several EDA investments in the region helping create the economic ecosystem needed to support growth of quality jobs. Last year, for instance, the nearby city of Hermiston, Oregon, celebrated the opening of its South Hermiston Industrial Park, a project supported by a $1.5 million EDA grant that’s expected to create 250 new jobs and generate $70 million in private investment. Meanwhile, a $300,000 EDA investment with the Port of Benton in Richland, Washington — a neighboring community to Pasco — helped capitalize the Tri-Cities Fund Development Project, an initiative that’s working to recruit and empower seed-stage investors in the area.

The EAA program is EDA’s most flexible program, making grants to help communities plan, build, innovate, and put people back to work through projects designed to meet local needs. Learn more about EDA’s EAA funding opportunities.