Kennewick, The Stolen Salmon & Why Real Estate Is Booming There

First of all, I should tell you that I do not have the faintest notion why those dudes stole the freaking salmon from a fish hatchery in Kennewick, Washington! I can only tell you that, according to the Kennewick website, the dude allegedly stole the entire salmon. Doesn’t say if he was hungry or trying to sell the fish on the black market (is there a black market for salmon???) or whether he was, perhaps, romantically involved in some way with the big fish. Look, we are talking about Kennewick, Washington, so anything pretty much goes.

Now what brought me to the official Kennewick website in the first place, you may ask? (That’s okay. If you didn’t ask it, I just did.)

I’ll get to that in a minute. But first…for those not familiar with Kennewick, Washington (and I’m guessing that’s like 99% of you, right?) it is a city of almost 66 thousand people (and an unknown number of salmon I’m guessing) that is about a three and a half hour drive from Seattle.

In the winter, the temperature rarely drops below 44 degrees and in the summer seldom climbs much above 88. Except when it does.

The city is in Benton County which fits very nicely into the southeastern portion of this northwestern state.

And, did I tell you that Forbes ranks it number two in job growth for the entire United States? (Suppose that could mean it has just added two new jobs!)

Now I am getting to the interesting part.

Bucking the National Housing Trend

I looked up all this stuff about Kennewick, Washington because right there, smack in the middle of a CNNMoney.com story about how national home prices are now forecast to actually go down another 11 percent–guess which metro area is bucking the trend big time?

Oh come on….this is easy. YES….Kennewick, Washington of all places on Earth.

Says the world’s most self-important network: ” The biggest winner will be the Kennewick, Wash., metro area, where home prices have ramped up 8.9% over the past three years and are expected to increase another 3.4% by June 2010.”

Now, of course, CNN, being CNN, doesn’t bother exploring why this might be? Why Kennewick, Washington?

But I have this feeling it all has something to do with the theft of that stinking salmon. Well, the salmon was probably not stinking yet…but probably still smelled like a fish right off the bat, wouldn’t you think?

I mean, I started thinking: what would motivate someone to steal a salmon in the first place? And, more important, why would that “news” make it to the city’s website????

Damned if I know. But I do know this: Anyplace that can make a big deal about a swiped future dinner course, can probably live with the fish tale that it is THE place to invest in real estate. Now, pass the tarter sauce, please.

Photo Credit: bugeaters via Flikr

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Article Author: Charles Feldman

Charles has written 179 articles for us.
Visit Charles's Website: http://www.thefeldmanblog.com

Charles is currently reporting for KNX Radio in Los Angeles, is the co-author of the book No Time To Think, and can be found commenting about the news on his blog, The Feldman Blog, as well as on The Huffington Post.