City Projects Add to Flurry of Downtown Wheeling Paving
Eric Ayres Trending
WHEELING -- A flurry of paving will be taking place in downtown Wheeling over the next several weeks, as the city plans to move forward with its own resurfacing work on streets adjacent to the state's ongoing Downtown Streetscape Project.
This week, connecting streets between Main and Market streets from 10th to 14th streets -- in addition to one lane of a long stretch of Market Street -- were being paved as part of the West Virginia Division of Highway's $37 million, multi-year Streetscape project. On Tuesday night, officials in the city of Wheeling announced that additional side streets connected to Main and Market streets will also be paved in the near future.
These additional projects will be outside the scope of the Streetscape project and are being handled by the city's contractors, officials noted.
During Tuesday night's meeting of Wheeling City Council, City Manager Robert Herron noted that work will soon begin on a small section of 12th Street near the main entrance to Heritage Port. City Council late last year agreed to take on this additional work to make this important section of the downtown uniform with the adjacent streets and sidewalks that have been revitalized as part of the Streetscape work.
"Beginning on Aug. 25, Savage Construction will begin the streetscaping portion of 12th Street between Main and Water," Herron noted. "That work was delayed to get us past the festival season. You'll recall that council authorized redoing the sidewalks which were not part of the original scope of the Streetscape Project from Main to Water on both sides of the street."
City leaders had originally considered having a change order with general contractor Triton Construction added to the state's Streetscape project to finish this section of 12th Street. However, city officials instead elected to hire its own contractor to perform the work. Savage Construction's contract for the work was around $160,000.
"Trees have been cut down. They'll be taken out, and new sidewalks and paving will be put in," Herron said.
Just two blocks up the street, another additional section of the downtown will soon be paved through a contract with the city. The section of 11th Street near the entrance of the new Market Street Parking Structure is slated for resurfacing, as well - just as the Streetscape paving makes its way up Market Street.
"That is kind of the final piece of the Market Street Parking Structure project," Herron said.
During the construction of the new parking structure from 2022 until late last year, that portion of 11th Street remained closed to traffic and was occupied by materials used by the parking garage contractor's crews.
"That area was used as a lay-down area," Herron said. "It was in poor condition before the project started. Now that the Streetscape paving has come through, we're coordinating that, and we'd like to get 11th Street paved."
Herron noted that this was always part of the plan related to the development of the new Market Street Parking Garage, but it was not included in the contract for the construction of the facility, nor was it included in the state's Downtown Streetscape Project.
"This was part of the original project -- not part of the original contract, but part of the original intent was to do this portion of 11th Street," the city manager explained.
All of the work associated with the resurfacing of the downtown -- including the remaining Streetscape work -- is expected to wrap this fall.