Peanuts Park Just Got a Permanent Statue. Its Farmers Market's Future Is Still Up for Bid.

"These programs have played an important role in the growth of downtown Pasco, and we're excited to give community organizations and local leaders the opportunity to help shape what's next."

That's Pasco City Manager Harold Stewart, talking about the Pasco Farmers Market and the Pasco Specialty Kitchen. It reads like the kind of quote that goes out with any routine city announcement. It isn't one. Buried in that sentence is the fact that the two programs most responsible for downtown Pasco's Saturday morning identity are, right now, without a locked-in operator for next year.

Here's the part that makes this week specific instead of general: proposals from anyone who wants to take over running the market and the kitchen starting in 2027 are due by August 5, 2026. That's today. Meanwhile, eleven days ago, the city bolted a bronze statue to the ground at Peanuts Park, permanently. If you live near downtown, you're watching two things happen to the same three blocks at once: the physical identity of the park getting more fixed, and the operational engine that runs it getting handed to whoever wins a bid.

A Bronze Fukuda for the Park Named After Him

Noburo "Peanuts" Fukuda was a retired railroad worker who spent decades riding a tricycle through Pasco, picking up litter and handing out candy and peanuts to children. Peanuts Park was dedicated in his honor in 1977, and Fukuda died in 1993. For nearly fifty years, the park carried his name without carrying his likeness. That changed on July 25, when the city unveiled a bronze statue at the park, at 10 a.m., with the community invited to attend.

The statue didn't happen quickly. It's the first major public art project commissioned by the Pasco Arts & Culture Commission, which put out a call for art in 2022 and selected sculptor Seth Vandable in 2023 to create it. Four years passed between that original call and the bronze actually going into the ground, for one statue in one park. That's worth sitting with, because it's the exact opposite pace of what's happening with the market underneath it.

The Deadline That Landed on the Same Calendar

The Pasco Farmers Market has run since 1988 as a project of the Downtown Pasco Development Authority, connecting Columbia Basin growers directly with Tri-Cities households for almost four decades. That's the kind of institution people stop thinking of as an "operator" and start thinking of as just a fact of downtown, like the park itself.

But the city is now inviting qualified organizations, nonprofits, and individuals to submit proposals to operate the Farmers Market, the Specialty Kitchen, or both, beginning in 2027, and today is the deadline. That doesn't mean the market is closing or that the current arrangement is in trouble. It means the city has opened the door to a formal transition, and whoever walks through it, whether that's the same organization or someone new, will be setting the direction for both programs for the foreseeable future.

If you've built your Saturday around the market at Peanuts Park, this is the year that direction gets decided.

What the Specialty Kitchen Has Already Proven

Part of what's at stake sits just across South Fourth Avenue from the farmers market: the Pasco Specialty Kitchen, a certified commercial kitchen with multiple walk-up vendor windows at 110 S. Fourth Ave. It's easy to walk past it as just another building downtown. It's actually been the launch point for real businesses. Over the years it has served as an incubator space, giving rise to businesses like Angel Brook Ice Cream and Aub's Bananza Bread.

Whoever wins the operator bid inherits that track record, and the responsibility to keep it going. A kitchen that's produced two named, still-operating local food businesses isn't a nice-to-have amenity. It's infrastructure for the kind of small business growth that downtown Pasco has been quietly leaning on for years.

The Park Split by a Street

Here's a detail most people who drive past Peanuts Park don't clock: the park is split in two by Lewis Street. The south side, where the market and the statue now sit, got a full renovation completed in 2021. The north side was set aside as its own separate project on the city's Capital Improvement Plan.

That north side project moved forward this spring. In late April, the city council reviewed a concept plan for Peanuts Park North that included plaza space along Lewis Street, temporary recreation or event space, mural and art walk opportunities, outdoor seating, and removable shade. Nothing is built yet. Construction moves forward as funding becomes available, which is city language for "watch the budget cycle, not the calendar." But the concept itself tells you something: the city sees Peanuts Park North as the next canvas for the same kind of public identity-building the statue just delivered on the south side.

Put the two projects next to each other and the pattern is hard to miss. South side: permanent statue, finished renovation, market and kitchen up for a new operator. North side: still a concept plan, still unfunded, still a blank plaza waiting for a mural wall that doesn't exist yet. Downtown Pasco isn't one finished project. It's two halves moving at different speeds, on either side of the same street.

New Storefronts Nearby

Downtown's momentum has company from a couple of directions. Casa de los Chilequiles opened its doors on April 10, 2026, adding a Mexican restaurant to the rotation with live mariachi on some nights. And a few miles out on Road 68, Slim Chickens opened its Pasco location on Monday, July 27, becoming the chain's second Washington store. The building had sat empty since a former Arby's closed there in 2024, so it's one more example of a storefront that had gone dark coming back to life this year, even if it's not downtown proper.

None of this is a coincidence stacked on top of another coincidence. It's what a downtown corridor looks like when public investment (the statue, the park plans) and private investment (new restaurants filling old buildings) happen in the same stretch of months. One doesn't cause the other. But they tend to show up together.

Easy Plans While the Bids Get Reviewed

If you want a low-effort reason to be downtown-adjacent this week, Gesa Stadium has been the Tri-City Dust Devils' home since 2001, with an intimate capacity of about 3,654 seats, which makes even a half-full crowd feel like a real night out. The Dust Devils host the Hillsboro Hops Thursday through Sunday this week, and come back for a run against the Everett AquaSox from August 18 through 23. It's a short drive from the park, and it's the kind of plan that doesn't require waiting on a city procurement process to pan out.

What to Watch This Fall

A few dates worth keeping on your radar as this plays out:

• The farmers market's current season runs every Saturday through October 31, regardless of who's running it come January.
• The city will be reviewing whatever proposals came in by today's deadline over the following weeks. Whoever's selected will shape the market and kitchen's direction for 2027 and beyond.
• Peanuts Park North remains a concept plan without a construction date. Funding decisions, not the calendar, will determine when ground actually breaks.

The bronze part of downtown Pasco isn't going anywhere. It's cast, it's installed, it's done. The rest of it, who's behind the market tables, what happens on the north side of Lewis Street, whether the kitchen keeps producing the next Angel Brook Ice Cream, is still being written. If you live near it, this is the year to pay attention rather than assume it'll look the same next summer as it did last one.

If you want more on what's happening around downtown Pasco and the surrounding area, our Pasco neighborhood page gets updated as things change. And if you're ever curious about anything else going on in this corner of the Tri-Cities, Camren Jones is always happy to talk it through. Let's Connect.