(Publisher’s Note: This article is the first of a two-part series composed after extensively interviewing a former Roxby Development employee who stepped forward to tell her story once the president of the company, Jeffrey J. Morris, was charged with wire fraud by the federal government. U.S. Attorney William Ihlenfeld of the Northern District Court of West Virginia said in a statement more charges against Morris will follow in the future. A trial date has not been established.)
There are questions people would like answered.
First on the list, of course, is who are these “investors” who handed over to Jeffrey J. Morris of Moundsville nearly $7 million? And why would any of the employees stick around when they weren’t getting paid? And if he had that much cash flow, why weren’t the workers compensated when expected?
Oh yeah, and who was that “Human Alarm Clock”? That one Roxby employee said to have been hired to rouse this self-proclaimed savior of the city of Wheeling each weekday morning?
Meet Corinne Chamberlin, known on social media simply as “Crin Joy,” a young lady who discovered the Friendly City once choosing Wheeling Jesuit University two decades ago, and “ONE” of the former “Human Alarm Clocks” once employed by the real estate startup founded by Morris and his parents in February 2020. Chamberlin emphasizes “ONE” when she tells her tale because the position wasn’t created for her nor did the job vanish once she was removed from the duty, either.
Chamberlin just wanted to be a part of what everyone was talking about, this unexpected Roxby group and its eccentric leader who was professing his intentions to make all of Wheeling’s collective dreams come true. After studying psychology as a college undergrad, she found herself in the social work world and wanted out. Chamberlin then heard about this mid-30s man who had purchased three of the city’s most mysterious yet neglected buildings and wanted to completely restore and preserve the outdated structures using millions of invested dollars.
She, and everyone else, were told Morris wished to create hospitality venues unlike the stereotypical banquet halls in a shrinking Rust Belt town. The Mount Carmel Monastery, the Scottish Rite Cathedral, and the Point Museum on Grandview Street – which was renamed “Cliff House West” – would be transformed into the “most magical and magnificent” party places, and those structures would represent the beginning of a building-by-building rebirth.
That was the pitch, Chamberlin explained, that was spouted over and over by Jeffrey J. Morris, a Moundsville man who had lived abroad in Germany and Australia before returning to the United States in 2017. He insisted to anyone who would listen that he planned to sculpt a new future for the Friendly City despite his critics and detractors. So, yes, Chamberlin became the “Human Alarm Clock” when she was hired as Morris’s personal assistant in October 2021.
For a short while, anyway. The nickname wasn’t technically in place when she accepted what turned out to be an impossible position to fill, but she was labeled with it just about a year ago after a few former employees first started sharing their stories with local media outlets.
“As far as the whole ‘Human Alarm Clock’ thing, I mean, yeah, that was me. At least, yes, I was one of them because I wasn’t the only one,” Chamberlin insisted. “It was weird, it was embarrassing even before the nickname thing, and it was impossible because Jeffrey made it that way. Some people in the company tried to make it out to be a coveted position, but it was stupid. Really stupid.
“’Wake up, Jeffrey. Wake up. You have an appointment.’ That’s, I guess, how I did it,” she explained. “And he had to have his Tim Horton’s ice coffee, and his breakfast sandwich, and oh, his cookies from Sarah’s Down in Main. Jesus, you’d better have those cookies, and yeah, they were delicious, but damn. And there were times when it took hours to get him out of bed even if it meant he missed meetings. And he did that all the time. Of course, he made it out to be all my fault.”
At the time the media reports hit the local radio airwaves in late August 2022, Morris ordered his attorneys to file a cease-and-desist order against the journalist and his outlet because, he claimed, the information was erroneous and incomplete.
Chamberlin disagreed then and now.
“I wasn’t the only one, and even though I was labeled with that, I wasn’t the first person assigned to wake the man up, and I wasn’t the last,” she recalled. “I know he had the legal stuff sent because he said the whole ‘Human Alarm Clock’ situation wasn’t true because it implied he wasn’t able to wake himself up and conduct himself in a professional manner. But it was completely true though because I did it and I wasn’t the only one.
“Listen, I’m not a morning person myself and I’ve never been a morning person, but I did the whole alarm clock thing because of everything else,” Chamberlin insisted. “Fine, I had to wake up a grown man, but as weird as that was, I loved the vision and I loved most of the ideas being discussed because everyone was so excited, and it was contagious. Plus, when I told my friends what was going on, they thought it was really cool, too.”
Lipstick on The Pig
On February 3, 2020, Roxby Development was officially licensed by the Secretary of State’s office in West Virginia, and at the time, only the property known as the “Mount Carmel Monastery” was under renovation to transform the Spanish-style structure into what Morris referred as a boutique hotel.
In September the same year, Roxby made a deal with the Scottish Rite Masonry to take possession of the long-silent, five-story Cathedral at 83 14th Street in East Wheeling. The announced plan was to convert the century-old building into a multi-level event center with at least five different venues within its walls, including a completely restored, 300-plus-seat theatre on the top level. Morris also crafted an undefined property management agreement with the owner of the former Point Museum, a large home perched over downtown Wheeling ever since Chip and Sallie West operated the property as a tourist attraction.
By the Spring of 2021, there was a company chef, an in-house restoration operation, and a creative/marketing division. Morris then took possession of the historic McLure House Hotel on Market Street in July 2021, a lodge first opened in the mid-1800s that was left to decay by an out-of-state owner who snagged the property off foreclosure auction in the 2010s.
Morris agreed to pay more than $6 million for the 170-room hotel and admitted to Chamberlin and other employees that he “took one for the team” by overpaying for the property.
“But it all looked legit, too, because work was being done every single day, and a lot of the people Jeffrey had working for him were very respected people in the community,” Chamberlin said. “I remember when events were taking place at the (Scottish) Rite and at the McLure, I started getting interested and started wondering if there was a job for me with Roxby.
“Since high school, I’ve been interested in the entertainment industry and helping make events happen, so I thought if I could get a position with Roxby, it was something I could get involved with at those venues,” she explained. “I’ve always believed the people in the Wheeling area just want something different, something that’s new to them and this area, and that’s what I wanted to help bring here for Roxby. It’s too bad that didn’t get to happen.”
That’s because, according to Chamberlin’s recollections, of the company-wide mayhem that took place frequently following the purchase of the McLure House. She said confusion over liquor licenses for the venues, a hiring frenzy, a division among corporate officers, and more frequent missed paydays produced hard feelings among employees. Once the company’s first round of layoffs took place in late April 2022, others began to walk away, as well.
“It was so bizarre because you never knew exactly what was happening and that made no sense because the team assembled was really a super team. You could have really accomplished a whole lot with the people that were hired,” Chamberlin insisted. “It was really a rock star cast of people who were talented and passionate, but it was seldom when you saw anyone accomplishing anything because, sooner than later, something would need to be paid for and there was never money for those things. The money issues stopped everything.
“You just knew there had to be big problems when employees had to start paying for some of the entertainment at the hotel’s bar. Jeffrey promised to pay us back, but that rarely happened,” she revealed. “The whole situation made everyone miserable and people just stopped showing up.”
Chamberlin, who later in her Roxby tenure worked on project management and event planning, witnessed on several occasions when several former employees confronted the company president about their missed compensation, unannounced changes in duties, and owed monies.
“That seldom worked out for any of them because Jeffrey would act like people were wrong for holding him accountable,” she reported. “People would hold him accountable and then he would slander them. Literally, every chance he got he would just talk so much shit on them for doing that. It was so wrong.
“Most people put up with not getting paid once or twice, but there was a lot of anger and frustration once it started to happen more often,” Chamberlin added. “It really became the most toxic work environment I’d ever seen.”
Part Two will be published tomorrow evening after Chamberlin appears as a guest on River Talk – Ohio Valley at 5 p.m. on 100.1 and 100.9 FM and on AM1290 and AM1430.
