A “ghost town” is how Wheeling Chamber of Commerce President Erikka Storch described downtown Wheeling during the majority of 2020.
Employees of The Health Plan, Williams Lea Tag, and the Orrick global law firm were sent home to work, restaurants were limited to take-out service, and the vast majority of downtown and Center Wheeling businesses were deemed by the state as non-essential and were forced to close to the public.
There were few reasons, therefore, to travel Main and Market streets.
“I continued going to my office during the stay-at-home order because there wasn’t anyone else in our Chamber office at the time, and there were long stretches of time when I didn’t see any vehicles in downtown,” Storch recalled. “Main and Market are usually very busy streets, and you have to be very careful when you cross them, but that wasn’t the case for most of last year.
“But since vaccinations have been taking place and restrictions have gone away, the businesses have opened back up 100 percent, and the traffic has returned to the downtown,” she said. “Plus, there’s been a lot of road construction in preparation for the streetscape project that is supposed to begin at some point this year. I know a lot of Chamber members are anxious for that project to be completed.”
Wheeling Meeting Projections
As the president of the Wheeling Chamber, Storch has the opportunity to work with members of other chamber organizations throughout the Upper Ohio Valley. According to what she has been hearing, the economic recovery has progressed in East Ohio and in Marshall and Wetzel counties, as well.
In the Wheeling area, Storch said business owners are bouncing back.
“In several conversations I’ve had with our members, they’ve told me that they have met the goals they have set so far for this year,” she said. “Of course, those goals had to be readjusted because of the pandemic, but I have had some members tell me they did better in 2020 than they did in 2019. That really surprised me.
“Even restaurant owners have told me they have met their new goals for this year, and that was great to hear,” Storch explained. “Now, of course, there were the federal dollars that flowed to a lot of our businesses, and those dollars could be the reason why they have survived all of this, but that’s OK because that’s what those tax dollars were intended to do. As long as that money was used by those owners the right way, those loans will be forgiven.”
Storch was especially pleased to witness the inventive ways those owners developed for additional marketing.
“One thing I have enjoyed watching is the creativity that a lot of business owners came up with to enhance their businesses,” Storch said. “They are entrepreneurs for a reason, so they came up with ideas to help themselves get through a very tough time. They really rose to the challenges during the pandemic.
“Now, once the restrictions were taken away by the governor, a lot of businesses couldn’t fill positions because people weren’t ready to go back to work,” she said. “Now that the federal funds have been removed from the unemployment payments, hopefully, that will allow a lot of people to see the value of returning to work so our businesses can fill those positions and get back to 100 percent strength.”
