HDKP Announces Next Phase of Dine-Out 2.0 With Temporary Road Closure Starting Aug. 13

 August 7, 2020, Kennewick, WA - On Saturday, July 18, 2020, the Historic Downtown Kennewick Partnership coordinated with downtown restaurants, businesses, and food trucks to temporarily close sections of Kennewick Ave to vehicle traffic and host dining in the street. Over 1,200 came out that night and collectively spent over $25,000 at downtown Kennewick businesses and restaurants. 

“The response from the community was overwhelming!” says Director, Stephanie Button. “Businesses that were open and able to stay open later, reported significant sales. I had one business owner tell me that she was able to make rent with her sales that day. Another business owner shared that it was the best day they had since Christmas shopping.”

With the lessons learned from the pilot of Dine-Out, HDKP has been working with downtown partners and businesses to expand on the experiment of trading drive-thru traffic and parking spaces with pedestrian-only boardwalks and outdoor dining and shopping. “We are inspired by Walla Walla and just recently, Leavenworth who have closed down parts of their busy downtown streets to cars and opening them up to physical and socially distanced dining and retail opportunities,” says Button. 

The primary goal of this experiment is to help businesses by creating pedestrian public spaces that attract customers who maybe never considered downtown Kennewick as a safe place to social distance.  Downtown is not experiencing its regular flow of traffic that it usually sees this time a year. Additionally, the loss of major crowd-drawing events like the Fair Parade, Hydroplane races, car shows, concerts at the Branding Iron and Clover Island, and First Thursday Art Walks have eliminated some of the biggest sales days of the year.

“We have businesses downtown that have staff working remotely now, which has cut down the ‘9 to 5’ traffic and the lunch crowd that we used to experience. The "anchoring" businesses, which include our restaurants and bars have been working at a diminished capacity or have not been able to be open at all. The restaurants and bars, when operating at full capacity, draw a lot of people to downtown. With the restaurants doing only take-out/curbside pick-up or operating at limited outdoor seating, it doesn't encourage people to stay downtown. Rather, they get in and get out,” says Button.

The theory being tested, which has shown to be successful in other, similar communities around the state and nation, is that by closing off streets to cars and letting businesses take over the streets for dining and shopping, it is a quick and more efficient way of boosting capacity back to "normal" for those businesses. It also creates an atmosphere that encourages increased shopping traffic and fosters downtown as a destination in and of itself.

The plan is to temporarily transform the 200 and 300 blocks of Kennewick Ave into pedestrian-only spaces and expand the outdoor dining and shopping spaces for the businesses there.  The plan is to maintain these spaces for 8 weeks, until Oct. 8th. HDKP will monitor the success of this experiment make sure that all of the downtown businesses are benefiting.  The cross streets of Dayton, Cascade, and Benton will remain open for driving and parking. The pedestrian-only spaces will be located in-between Dayton and Cascade Streets and in-between Cascade and Benton Streets. 

“There are 1,300 parking spaces in the downtown, there are even more parking opportunities within a 5 to 10-minute walk of the center of downtown. We are temporarily displacing 56 parking spaces, 4 of which are Handicap Accessible spaces,” says Button. HDKP is working with their partners at the City of Kennewick to designate temporary Handicapped Accessible parking spaces on the side streets to accommodate visitors to the downtown that require the use of those spaces. 

“This is going to be a big learning opportunity for the downtown Kennewick community. We have to work with one another to make this successful for everyone. We are so excited that we have the opportunity to bring people to downtown and support our local, small businesses in this way. The idea to close down parts of Kennewick Ave in the first place originally came from a couple of business owners,” says Button. “We are here to help and support our downtown business and community by working with them to innovate and build resiliency, especially in times like these.”  

The Historic Downtown Kennewick Partnership is a National Main Street Accredited, volunteer-driven 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation aspiring to reflect our diverse community, provide an inclusive and vibrant downtown destination, encourage economic and creative opportunities, and preserve our rich history to support a dynamic future. You'll find us on the east side of the Tri-Cities area in Kennewick, WA near the beautiful Columbia River. Visit HDKP at historickennewick.org.

If you would like more information about this topic, please call Stephanie Button, Executive Director at 509-582-7221, or email her.