photo by: Eric Ayres

The finishing touches are being put on the new $9 million Wheeling Fire Department Headquarters in East Wheeling, which should be completed and in use around the end of this month.

WHEELING — Work is wrapping up at the $9 million Wheeling Fire Department Headquarters in East Wheeling, and city leaders are getting ready to unveil the new facility with a public open house.

During Tuesday night’s meeting of Wheeling City Council, City Manager Robert Herron announced that finishing touches are being completed inside the facility, and once fire department personnel get settled into the headquarters, the public will get a chance to check it out.

“The fire department headquarter project is moving along to the point where we’re down to punch list items,” Herron told council members Tuesday. “We’ve tentatively scheduled a public open house for Saturday, Sept. 13. We anticipate that the fire department should be able to move into the building within the next couple of weeks, but we’re getting very, very close to having that project completed, and we do want to show it off to the public.”

Completion of the new fire headquarters on 17th Street has been long-awaited. Ground was broken at the site in the summer of 2022 and, initially, fire officials hoped to relocate to the new facility in early 2024. Work moved along at a steady pace for months until problems began to surface surrounding payments to subcontractors.

In March 2024, the general contractor for the project — &build, a PCS Company — filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, leaving the Wheeling FDHQ project, construction of the new Moundsville Municipal Building and several other public projects in limbo.

Eventually, a surety company named Great Lakes Contracting as the new general contractor assigned to complete the fire department headquarters project.

Because of the series of delays that set back progress on the facility’s construction, the city had to vacate the former fire department headquarters before the new station was completed.

The former headquarters was housed in the lower level of the Center Wheeling Parking Garage, which was already under contract to be demolished.

Wheeling Fire Chief Jim Blazier and other members of the command staff temporarily relocated to the Armory complex in Clator. Other fire department personnel, fire trucks and other equipment were relocated to either the Armory or other satellite stations in the city while work at the new headquarters continued.

On Tuesday, Blazier said the staff will be glad to finally make the move to the new headquarters in the coming weeks.

“I think they’re very excited about the upcoming opening of the station — to get us back under one roof again and back to some sort of normalcy throughout the city,” Blazier said. “It’s a beautiful facility. We’re currently having some training on the building itself with some of the contractors that put it together. We’re waiting for a small punch list to get finished up, and hopefully we’re going to be in there very soon.”

Blazier indicated that if all goes as planned, the new facility should be operational and occupied by the end of this month.

“We have some of our office furniture installed, some computers are in place and our training room is pretty well set up,” he said. “The only thing that’s really left to do is some touchup work on the walls, some drywall repairs and some paint issues. I anticipate that getting done very quickly.”

The city used money from Wheeling’s City Service Fee to fund the construction of the new fire department headquarters. The new building is a 24,860-square-foot, single-story structure with several modern amenities. It is equipped with large bays that have space for additional fire trucks. There are areas designed for hands-on training, including a hose drying and training tower, a large training room, offices for command staff and spacious bunk rooms and sleeping quarters for firefighters.

Officials indicated that additional information will be presented to the public in the coming weeks regarding the planned open house at the new fire headquarters.