People asked him every day.
“What are you going to do with that?”
“What isn’t anything happening with that?”
Over and over. And the THAT the people were asking about was the former campus of the Ohio Valley Medical Center and its 800,000 square feet of space inside the walls of six multi-story buildings.
Finally, Wheeling Councilman Ben Seidler has an answer to offer.
“Although the vote to take possession of the OVMC campus was the last one before I became a member of Wheeling Council, I do feel as if a huge load of worry has been taken off my shoulders, and I’ll tell you why,” Seidler explained. “As the council representative for Ward 2 covering Wheeling Island, North Wheeling, and the Fulton, one thing I know a lot about is empty buildings and what happens to them over time.
“If we would not have taken possession of those buildings, I know we as a City would have ended up tearing them down anyways after someone who purchased them off auction had stripped them down to their skeletons,” he said. “It’s an evil cycle and it never ends in this city because property owners know how to play the system. That’s why I supported the City taking possession and doing what we did for two years so we could reach this point in time.”
City officials joined executives from WVU Medicine last Friday to announce a new cancer treatment and research facility would be constructed on the land where the former Ohio Valley Medical Center rests today. The six structures on the property now will be demolished after the remediation of asbestos and other materials take place over the next 12 months.
OVMC was shuttered by Alecto-West Virginia in late September 2019 after just two years of operation. More than 800 employees lost their jobs, and once the coronavirus pandemic began in March 2020, access to health care was very limited throughout the Upper Ohio Valley.
“That’s one of the biggest reasons why Friday was a great day for everyone involved, and it was a great day for the people who won’t have to travel in the future to get the medical help they need,” Seidler said. “If you are someone who has never experienced cancer yourself or with a family member, then maybe you don’t understand completely, but I have and that’s why I know how important this treatment center is going to be once completed.
“And we could not have reached this point without the amazing leadership of (city manager) Bob Herron,” he continued. “He pulled this off for us despite the many challenges that were involved, and now we’ll see a very large area become something that will save lives again and we all owe Bob a great deal of gratitude.”
Floor By Floor. Brick By Brick.
The East Building. The South Tower. The old and the new portions of the Nurse’s Residence.
There’s also the Education and Administration Building, the West Tower, and the former home of the Hillcrest Behavioral Center.
Add up all the floors in each of the six structures, and the total square footage of the OVMC campus total just about 800,000.
“And I was told that it’s about eight acres of space when you added it all up,” Seidler said. “Think about that. It’s a huge amount of demolition that has to take place before anything can be flattened and constructed on that land, and it’s not going to happen overnight.”
That’s why Seidler, and most other local residents, likely will make effort to observe the leveling of the medical center that has rested on the same land for more than a century. The oldest structure is the original Ohio Valley General Hospital, now to referred to as the East Building, and the newest building is the former home of Hillcrest.
“Watching those buildings come down is going to be surreal for sure because they have stood there my entire lifetime,” Seidler said. “I know there are a lot of people who have an emotional attachment to those buildings because there are a lot of history there, but the buildings were beyond the point to where they could have been reasonably restored. They are in worse shape than a lot of people realize, and in the two years the City has owned them, it’s cost us all a lot of money.
“This new campus is going to be amazing, and it’s going to change that area of Center Wheeling forever,” the council member said. “I know that our Centre Market area lost a lot of business because, just like that, hundreds of people just went away from the area. What WVU Medicine will do on that footprint will not bring as many employees to Center Wheeling, but I believe, over time, we’ll see more development in that area that will.”
Kurt Zende, currently the president of the Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce, was the economic development specialist for the city of Wheeling for 18 years and he spent more than two years attempting to recruit takers for floors, buildings, and even the entire parcel.
“I know there was some interest communicated, and there were a handful of groups that came to Wheeling to take tours and to talk terms, but those people were interested in pieces of the property and not the whole campus like WVU Medicine was,” Seidler reported. “I am not aware of another group that was interested in the entire campus and that is what we were all hoping for as the result.
“One of the biggest reasons why I am so happy this property will belong to someone else soon is the amount of money it took to just maintain all of the buildings. Depending on the season, the City spent between $50,00 and $80,000 keeping the utilities on and staffing the campus just enough to make sure everything was OK,” the councilman explained. “The way the utilities were connected on that campus, if you kept one building warm, you had to keep them all warm, and that cost a lot of money.”
