Even though Wheeling’s Downtown Streetscape Project is still more than a year from completion, we’re already learning that at least one public entity has plans to carve into the newly paved downtown streets shortly after they’re finished. In this case, it’s the Ohio County Development Authority — yes, a county agency — that will pay a firm to drill holes and do other work starting at the former Straub Automotive parking lot at the corner of 16th and Main streets, with the drilling to move across 16th Street toward the Boury Lofts. This will be done as part of environmental testing of the parking lot and its underlying surface.

Ohio County came to own the property after Straub moved from downtown to a spot at The Highlands. The county has had a deal in place for more than a decade to sell the lot to West Virginia Northern Community College for a little more than $1 million. Before that can take place, though, environmental issues must be addressed.

The lot’s issues are underground, as taxpayers spent $700,000 in 2020 to remove nearly two dozen storage tanks that sat under the lot’s surface. There may be other issues present, and to help facilitate the sale, the county development authority has agreed to spend $135,000 with Downstream Strategies to do an environmental study that is expected to take at least 18 months to complete.

The time to do this work is now. State highways officials are discussing paving Main Street in the coming months as sidewalk work wraps up. That likely will include 16th Street. The last thing our downtown needs is to have more work taking place shortly after the streets are paved.

This is something we’ve been warning against for some time. Drilling into the new street surface will only lead us back to where we are now with our streets. The Development Authority needs to ensure this work is done now, when the streets already are a mess, instead of waiting.