Approximately 50 Wheeling police officers soon will move out of the Ohio County Courthouse and be based on the first floor of the former Valley Professional Center.
Wheeling City Manager Bob Herron confirmed the move will take place within the next month to allow for more space for the largest division within the city’s police department. The department currently operates out of approximately 4,600 square feet on the first floor of the courthouse on Chapline Street, but once renovations are completed to three floors of the Valley Professional Center, Chief Shawn Schwertfeger, the officers, and the civilian employees will have more than 30,000 square feet.
The structure, located across Chapline Street from the former campus of the Ohio Valley Medical Center, was acquired by the city of Wheeling in June.
“Right now, we are working on moving the Patrol Division of our police department within the next 30 days to the first floor of the building,” Herron said. “The Patrol Division takes up a very small space in our current police department, and that division is the largest one that the police department has right now.
“Once that move is made, the detectives and the civilian staff will continue working out of the current location,” he said. “With this move, those officers will have far more space than where they work now.”
A Pleased Chief
Chief Schwertfeger was graduated from John Marshall High School and West Liberty State College, but then he moved away from the Upper Ohio Valley and was a member of the Albemarle County, Virginia, Police Department for 21 years. He decided to retire in 2012 from that position and move closer to home, and that is why he interviewed for the position with the Wheeling Police Department.
However, Schwertfeger never stepped foot into the department’s location within the courthouse before accepting the police chief position eight years ago. That is why he campaigned so heavily for a new public safety building the past few years.
“I went through a police chief assessment process, but that was held at Oglebay, and when I met with the city manager to accept the job, that was off-site, too. I had never stepped foot into this department until my first day,” Schwertfeger recalled. “Had I known that the police department wasn’t very sophisticated, it would have been a con in the con column when I contemplated whether or not to take the job.
“I did want to come home and be closer to my family, and I’m sure I would have made the same decision, but right now I am just very happy to be moving forward with our new location,” he said. “The new location will be even better than you think now because we have really thought it out well so we can be sure that this can be a functional police department for a lot of years.”
Need Help?
Schwertfeger stressed that if citizens are in need of a police officer for whatever reasons, they will still need to go to the downtown headquarters for the assistance they seek. While 50 officers are assigned to the Patrol Division, those men and women are divided among the department’s three daily shifts.
“The Patrol Division has three different shifts, and that means there shouldn’t be anymore than 16 to 20 officers there at the same time,” Schwertfeger explained. “We also will have some support staff there, I will have an office there, and the deputy chief of operations also will work out of both locations.
“Now, if one of our officers is on patrol and makes an arrest, that officer will have to bring that individual to the courthouse for processing, and the front desk will still be in the courthouse, too, so if someone needs an officer, they would need to come to our current location,” he said. “We will not have a receptionist at the Valley Professional Center yet, so that first floor will be used for the operations of that division only.”
Hunting a New Home
Members of Wheeling Council made a public safety building a priority, and city officials joined Schwertfeger and Fire Chief Larry Helms in searching for property on which to construct a structure that could house the police and fire headquarters.
The first proposal involved a three-story, $20 million building on city-owned property on the corner of 10th and Market streets in downtown, but an increase in property taxes was rejected by voters on Nov. 6, 2018. The second proposal, a one-story, $14.5 complex, was proposed for a three-acre property in East Wheeling, and City Council approved a User Fee to fund the construction.
But that was when Wheeling Councilman Dave Palmer suggested contacting MPT LLC, the property owner of the OVMC campus, to inquire about the Valley Professional Center. MPT officials, however, insisted the city assume ownership of all six of the buildings.
While Wheeling’s economic development strategist Kurt Zende has been working to recruit occupants for the campus, Herron has been preparing for the complete renovation of the professional center.
“Since the building hasn’t been gutted yet, there’s still some furniture in there,” Herron said. “There were a lot of private doctors’ offices in the Valley Professional Center, though, so they took most of their property after the hospital was closed.
“The renovation of the building will be in the $4.3 million range, and we’re still on schedule for the bids to go out in May,” he said. “After that, the construction will take approximately a year.”
Who Goes Where?
Once completed, the new police headquarters will feature a new front façade and an addition for a training room. Also, on the first floor will be the booking area, evidence storage, civilian offices, and the victim advocacy division.
Operations, patrol, and investigations will be located on the second floor, and the third floor will feature offices for administrative personnel and the chief, as well as the locker room, and a gym.
Schwertfeger did confirm that the Patrol Division could move back to the courthouse while the renovations are taking place on the structure’s first floor.
“These folks have been putting up with this area for a long time, so a couple more months won’t be that bad, I don’t believe,” the chief said. “There’s going to be a lot of work that will need done to make it into what we need, but, for the most part, most of it will be on the inside of the building.
“I believe it’s going to be very, very nice, and it’s long overdue for this department,” Schwertfeger added. “I think it’s going to be something we all can be proud of, too.”
