It wasn’t always clutched by the art created by a community that extends well past this one city block because it’s been about the agricultural and culinary goods residents needed most during its more than a century of existence.
During some eras, though, most visited the public market house and the surrounding businesses only during the day and avoided the neighborhood once the daily fish fry was complete and darkness shadowed the nefarious. Some local folks these days, though, choose not to acknowledge the years when the drugs and the prostitution were prevalent, but to discern today’s direction of Wheeling’s Centre Market district, it’s imperative to admit its indiscretions.
“It’s been a good partnership between the City and the property owners who have restored their properties (along Market Street and Lane B),” said Wheeling City Manager Bob Herron. “We have had a Centre Market manager there for several years, and now it’s Brooke Price but it was Kurt Zende for a lot of years before he left for the Wheeling Chamber.
“We’ve made a lot of improvements to the market houses, and there’s more to do, that’s for sure. We’ve committed federal dollars for improvements, including a new roof for the lower market that required a $150,000 match,” he said. “But there will be improvements made to the restrooms, the security, the lighting, and a few other improvements, and it’ll be great because it’s a thriving area.”
Most of the district’s Victorian-style structures have active businesses on the street level and residential units on the second and third floors, and while dinner service is popular at a few eateries, each midday is busiest thanks to the services, the boutiques, and some of the Friendly City’s most favorite foods. There’s a collective heartbeat now, and whether it’s street festivals, outdoor dining, or a lady’s night on the market, the pulse is firm, and it is steady.
“When I first came down here (to Centre Market) to work,” said Zende before he left to become the president of the Wheeling Chamber, “I knew we had to engage local folks first. If we were successful there, then I believed we’d attract more businesses, more tenants in the market houses, and more people from outside the area because Centre Market then would be a destination.
“I know a lot of people hope to see the same thing happen in downtown, and I believe it’s possible,” he said. “It’s not going to be what it once was, but it’s going to be what people want. That’s how economic development works.”
Sometimes people look different ways when peering for a possible future. But not here. Not now.
“There’s no need,” said Market Café owner Jessica Clark-McDowell in September 2023. “This works.”
