RICHLAND, Wash. – The City of Richland is in talks to take over a staple of the Tri-Cities.
As of right now, the future of Cool Desert Nights is up in the air. The summer staple of the Tri-Cities won’t be happening this summer. The city of Richland is currently organizing its own car show.
Laura Hester, the city’s new Director of Parks and Public Facilities has only been on the job for four months and told me Cool Desert Nights reached out to them.
“Cool Desert Nights reached out and said hey, we’re looking for someone to take this on,” said Hester.
Hester says they are negotiating for the name.
“Everyone knows what Cool Desert Nights is,” said Hester. “We want to do that type of a car show, just make it bigger and better.”
Eric Van Winkle is the Project Manager of the organization and he says they offered their venue.
“We want that event to succeed in the Tri-Cities,” said Van Winkle. “So we offered our facility out here to try to put it on, to try to join together with the city of West Richland, the chamber there and it did not work.”
Van Winkle says he is not sure why they said no to the venue.
I did reach out to the West Richland Area Chamber to ask for their reasoning, but they didn’t answer because they were closed. When we get a response from them I’ll provide an update.
Hester says she’s working on making sure their car show will bring more cars to the area.
“The City of Richland hasn’t really done big signature events,” said Hester. “So one of the things we’re working on is fixing that.”
Hester says although the event won’t happen in June, she’s optimistic about the future of the show.
“Our goal is to eventually get it to a three or four thousand car, car show.
Hester said the car show they are planning is for September 8-9. The cars will be parked at the Columbia Point Golf Course.
This is the first of four big yearly events Richland plans on putting on in the future. One for every season.
