Word on Hawkins loan set next week

An indication of whether Whitman County will receive loan funding from the state to build infrastructure at Hawkins Companies long-proposed stateline strip mall will come next Friday, Aug. 17.

The state’s Public Works Trust Fund’s board of directors will rank projects for funding from a pool of hundreds of millions of dollars. Infrastructure at the 714,000-square-foot shopping center is one of those projects.

County Administrat-or Gary Petrovich reported Monday that staff in the Public Works Trust Fund have advanced the county’s application for $13 million through the first two rounds of cuts....