MATTAWA — A developer has purchased land and announced tentative plans to build a convenience store at the intersection of State Route 243 and Road 24 Southwest in Mattawa. Mattawa city officials will consider a request for a variance from Unity Partners, Kennewick, that would reduce the number of required parking spaces around the business. 

Unity Partners Managing Partner Hardeep Singh said the building would be 10,000 square feet, with space for the convenience store, a restaurant and a third business, as yet undetermined. The land was purchased from the Port of Mattawa. 

Singh said Mattawa was the kind of community the company was looking for. 

“We are developers who focus on smaller cities,” Singh said. “That’s kind of our niche.”  

The proposed site is at the northeast corner of the intersection, which has a roundabout. 

“We do have our design ready to go,” he said.  

How the property will be developed – or if it will be developed at all — will depend, in part, on the variance request. Singh said the city’s development standards would require 100 parking spaces, which would take up most of the property. The company’s design calls for 30 to 40 parking spaces, he said.  

Unity Partners also is looking at other property near that intersection, Singh said. The current plan would be retail space on the west side of SR 243 and housing on the east side. 

“(The houses) would be manufactured homes, but we’re not selling it as a manufactured home park,” Singh told Mattawa City Council members Sept. 5. “Those homes will be attached to land so that anybody can get a mortgage on it.”  

The first project would be the convenience store. Singh said if an agreement can be worked out with city officials, construction on the convenience store could start next year. 

Pat Boss, public affairs and business development for the port, said port officials visited some Unity Partners projects before agreeing to the sale. 

“We went and looked at some of the other projects they’ve done around the region,” Boss said. “They’re around the Tri-Cities and they’ve done some projects in Grandview, and the Hermiston, Ore., area. So we went and looked at their (projects) because we wanted to do our due diligence and see what they’ve done. And they’ve done some really nice projects.” 

Boss said traffic is increasing on SR 243, as it’s an alternate route to and from the Tri-Cities.  

“What’s happened in the last, probably five or six years, and something the port has noticed here in the last couple years is that the traffic flows have really increased around Mattawa,” Boss said. 

Currently, there aren’t a lot of services for travelers through that corridor, he said. Drivers might be more likely to stop at a business next to the highway, rather than turning onto Government Road and driving into Mattawa proper.  

“We feel like that whole corridor between Desert Aire and Beverly, especially right there on that roundabout, is a great area for some commercial development,” Boss said.