Believe it or not, the first signs of 21st Century progress in downtown Wheeling involved a group of demolitions that started in 2015. It was the 1100 block, an area riddled with structures that were the former this and the former that.
After it all came down, the green space sat, well, green, until the new headquarters for The Health Plan was announced in January 2016 and welcomed more than 400 employees just two years later. The construction project marked the first privately funded development in the downtown since 1986, and, finally, it was another sign of life following the arrivals of the Orrick Operations Center and the redevelopment of the Stone Center in the early 2000s.
And it is true. More people are employed in downtown Wheeling today than have been on payrolls ever before.
“It’s absolutely true according to the records I’ve seen,” insisted Erikka Storch, the president of the Wheeling Chamber of Commerce. “The jobs at Williams Lea are far more than ever worked at Stone & Thomas, and the same is true with Orrick. It may not look like it, but it is absolutely true.”
Downtown Living and More
A late addition to the Stone Center was the development of 16 loft apartments on the seventh and eighth floors on the east side of the structure by the Woda Group, and then the same developer opened the Boury Lofts at the corner of Main and 16th streets in 2015.
Enter Steve Coon and Coon Restoration, a company that has restored a residential building in North Wheeling and recently purchased the Eckhart House next door. The company also owns the former Wheeling Marsh Stogie building and is in agreement to transform the former Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel Building into 128 one- and two-bedroom apartments.
Once complete, the inventory of residents units between 10th and 16th street will increase to more than 200.
Roxby Development has been in Wheeling for more than a year since its purchase of the Mount Carmel Monastery in February 2020. Since, though, the development firm has purchased the Scottish Rite Cathedral, the 12th Street Garage, and the Overlook Museum.
“I agree 100 percent that what Steve Coon and Roxby Development have already announced is very exciting for the future of this city,” Storch said. “I am very pleased that I am in a position so that I can see what is taking place right with so many properties that a lot of people have chalked up as dead properties. Steve Coon and Jeffrey Morris are doing some incredible things, and I can’t wait to see what comes next.
“It seems like there has been an announcement about something new involving Roxby Development and Jeffrey every month, and I don’t think I am the only person in this city who is intrigued,” she said. “I had the opportunity to visit the developers at the Scottish Rite Cathedral, and I saw so many people going in and out to clear the debris that was left inside. I saw work being performed on almost every room I was in, and there’s been a lot of activity at the Mount Carmel Monastery, too.”
A Different Heyday
A single visit to the “Memories of Wheeling” Facebook page allows internet surfers to realize that most miss what downtown Wheeling once was. Shoes and clothes and hardware and jewelry and appliances and bank after bank after bank lined the streets along with theatres, bars, and restaurants people still recall these days.
While most downtown districts along the Northern Panhandle and in East Ohio possessed a G.C. Murphy’s, Wheeling’s Main and Market streets served as the metropolis for consumers in the Upper Ohio Valley. But one by one closures took place and not because of the opening of the Ohio Valley Mall but because of an economic shift that guided spenders to an indoor retail industry.
While several new businesses have opened in downtown Wheeling over the past decade, Storch has sensed a new energy she believes could lead to a reinvented downtown district.
“There have been a lot of developers and investors in our community over the course of time, and there have been several of them who have not been noticed very much,” Storch explained. “But I feel there are a lot of people right now that see the potential that we have here in Wheeling, and Steve Coon and Jeffrey Morris are two people who are doing a lot of development right now. To say it’s encouraging is an understatement.
“Most of the time, the project they invest in does not show progress as quickly as what the people of the city would like to see them make, but they have to get their ducks in a row because significant progress can be seen by the residents. In fact, that’s usually the case with the economic development projects that have taken place in the past and are taking place right now,” she said. “Once those ducks are in a row, though, that’s when the developers can make those mammoth moves to those properties. When that happens, people react in a very positive way.”
