Wheeling to Proceed With Nailers Way Relocation Project
WHEELING -- Bids are scheduled to be opened this week on the city’s next major project to be done in advance of the $25-plus million Downtown Streetscape Project.
A late addition to the Streetscape project last year, the Nailers Way relocation project will create a new four-way intersection at Main and 16th streets downtown.
"As the city prepares for the upcoming Streetscape project, everyone knows that we’re installing a water line on Main and Market streets," Wheeling City Manager Robert Herron said of the heavy construction that has been present in the downtown area over the past few months. "The next project that the city had agreed to do was the Nailer’s Way relocation project, which will relocate Nailers Way through the WesBanco Arena parking lot to line up with 16th Street."
Herron noted that the bid opening is scheduled to take place next Tuesday.
"That project has been specified and is currently out to bid," he said. "So we are moving forward with that project."
Nailers Way -- formerly known as South Street -- runs between WesBanco Arena and the Robert C. Byrd Intermodal Transportation Center. Presently, the street veers around the south side of the parking garage and joins Main Street near the south point of the Flatiron Building, a little less than 200 feet north of the intersection with 16th Street.
The city’s plan is to redirect Nailers Way through the WesBanco Arena parking lot to make a direct connection with the 16th Street intersection, thus bisecting the parking lot into two sections and creating a new four-way intersection on Main Street.
City leaders noted that the intention has been to have this new intersection included in the state of West Virginia’s plans for the Downtown Streetscape Project, which will bring all new paving, curbs, sidewalks, street lighting, traffic signalization and other features to the city’s main downtown traffic arteries. However, while the new intersection is included in the state’s Streetscape designs, plans for traffic signals at the new intersection have not been included or deemed necessary by officials at the West Virginia Department of Highways at this point.
"Based on the studies that they’ve conducted thus far, they do not feel that a traffic signal will be warranted," Herron said. "However, by doing the project now, we will have that re-evaluated once traffic does go through that intersection, and we’re optimistic that -- based on the flow of traffic that the relocated Nailer’s Way, which will include some bus traffic -- it will warrant a traffic signal in advance of the Streetscape project.
"At some point, we would like for the West Virginia DOH to review the traffic volume at the new intersection for a possible traffic signal there in the future."