City of Wheeling Prepping Prime Property for Future Development

He doesn’t know what’s next for large open lots in East Wheeling and Center Wheeling, but City Manager Bob Herron is quite confident economic development will be taking place in both areas in the near future.

Before the demolition of the Center Wheeling Parking Garage on the corner of 22^nd and Market streets, the plan called for sally port and parking lot projects for the adjacent Wheeling Police Headquarters, but Herron and other city officials altered that scope once the corner became barren for the first time since the garage was completed in 1976. At that time, employees and patients at the former Ohio Valley Medical Center utilized the five decks, and the Market Street level became the headquarters for the Wheeling Fire Department.

“The demolition project on the Center Wheeling garage went very smoothly and the contractor finished early and within the budget, so that was great news for us,” Herron said. “We originally had a game plan for constructing a sally port on the upper portion of the property with some police car parking, some storage, and even a small parking deck that would have risen up to the second floor of the police headquarters. But that plan has changed.

“We now feel those projects would take up too much space because that area would be a beautiful development space for economic development,” he said. “So, we’ve come up with a new game plan that I believe will be very functional for the police headquarters and still preserve as much of the site as possible for a new development in the future. We don’t know what that project could be right now, but it’s a large area that’s now available for something new.”

The historic Centre Market includes two market houses owned by the City of Wheeling, and those structures are surrounded by retail shops, eateries, and residential rowhouses. The businesses took a financial hit when OVMC was shuttered by Alecto-West Virginia in September 2019, but Herron hopes WVU Medicine’s new cancer treatment and research center will offset the losses in the near future.

“We knew it was a big parking structure since it had more than 800 parking spaces and six floors, but once it was down and we saw what we had, we changed our thinking about its future use,” Herron said. “And we’ve been communicating with the people at WVU Medicine to let them know what we’ve been thinking about to make sure it’s nothing they have planned for the property across the street.

“We’ll be putting out a request for qualifications so we can get some ideas about how to develop the property into a mixed-use development which would include commercial/retail on the first floor and hopefully some housing on the second, third, and fourth floors depending on what’s done there,” he said. “There’s a lot of potential for the site, so that’s why we’ve changed our plan for the property.”

The city manager did not reveal a solid timeline for the construction of WVU Medicine’s new facility, but Herron insisted the center will provide a positive economic impact in the area.

“In the conversations I have had with the people at WVU Medicine, they have a timeline in mind, and there are renderings that I’ve seen, but there are steps they need to take before anything official is released,” Herron confirmed. “One thing they have told me is that they will not have a food component on their campus because of how impressed they are with everything at Centre Market. We know how terrific it is, of course, and that’s something they’ve come to learn, too.

“And I can tell you they are cognizant of the impact they will have on the neighborhood and on the city as a whole,” he said. “This project is moving along very well and I believe before too long we’ll see a terrific development. They will be making some announcements over the next couple of months and that’s when everyone will get a good look at what they have planned for the property.”

Altering Future Use

For many years, remnants of the Hazel-Atlas Glass and Metal factory and the former Penn-Wheeling Closure operation rested on the three acres of land near the end of 19^th Street in East Wheeling, and the former owner – Americo Inc. – purchased the property in the early 2000s and did little with it.

Finally, after months of negotiations and proposed plans that included the construction of a public safety building for the fire and police departments, the City purchased the land as-is for approximately $150,000 in 2020, and removed the asbestos and demolished the structures for about $500,000 in 2021.

Since, the City has concentrated on a multi-year, $1 million Brownfield remediation grant project that is nearing its end, and also raising more than half of the property out of the flood plain from the adjacent Wheeling Creek.

“We’re still currently in a West Virginia DEP voluntary mediation program because the property had been environmentally compromised over the years, but we were able to receive a remediation grant to clean it up, and we’ve been monitoring it since the cleanup began,” he explained. “You can see the yellow pipes that stick out of the ground, and that part of this project is about to come to an end, and then we should receive a “No Further Action” letter from the DEP.

“That means the city would be absolved of any further liability connected to the property,” Herron explained. “So, that’s why we have been working to bring that property out of the flood plain as much as possible.”

Most of the crushed concrete from the Center Wheeling garage, in fact, has been transported and deposited on the acreage.

“Approximately 65 percent of the site needs to be raised out of the flood plain at various levels as long as the work doesn’t cause any flooding to an adjacent property,” the city manager said. “So, we’ve been stockpiling clean material to place there, and that includes parts of the Center Wheeling Parking Garage. It’s been ground up after it’s been removed from the area near Centre Market, and we’ll do the same with the materials from the Clay School demolition (later this year).

“Once we feel we have enough clean material, we’ll bid out a project to level it all out,” Herron added. “Once that’s completed and we have enough of the three acres raised out of the floodplain, the property will be ready for development, so that means we’ll get a clean site for under $1 million for sure – maybe even under $750,000 depending on how the rest of the remediation takes place. So, that all means it will prove to be a very good investment for the City whether we sell it or sign a long-term lease for the use of the land.”