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I have a little history with the former Ohio County Jail on Eoff Street.
Thankfully, it's not the kind that involved fingerprints, mug shots or a phone call home. Rather, the jail was one of the first big stories I tackled after arriving in Wheeling as a young reporter and being handed the Ohio County government beat.
Back then, West Virginia was working through a major change in how it housed prisoners. The Ohio County Jail had closed in 1994 with the opening of the Northern Regional Jail that year.
By the beginning of 1998, the state was again housing prisoners at the Eoff Street site. This came after the commissioners at that time -- David Sims, Tim McCormick and the late Art McKenzie -- along with former county administrator Greg Stewart had kicked around options for what to do with the facility. McKenzie, if I recall correctly, even floated the idea of using the jail as a temporary holding facility for low-level offenses that would have alleviated travel for deputies between Wheeling and Moundsville.
Now, nearly three decades later, we're staring at the other end of that story.
The state plans to close the facility Sept. 30 and move its inmates elsewhere in the corrections system. That will leave Ohio County with a building that has served a very specific purpose for a very long time -- and a pretty interesting question:
What in the world do we do with it now?
I think that's a question for this community to tackle.
And, to be clear, the answer may ultimately be … nothing. Or at least nothing that involves saving the existing structure.
Ohio County will lose about $220,000 a year in rent from the state when the jail closes. But county taxpayers also won't have to spend an estimated $750,000 on repairs and upgrades that would have been necessary to keep it operating as a jail.
That's the easy math.
The much harder calculation begins after the last prisoner leaves.
Ohio County Administrator Randy Russell told the current commissioners he plans to have a professional firm evaluate the building and determine what might realistically be done with it. That's important because this isn't a typical old building where you knock out a few walls, replace some windows, install new flooring and hang out a "For Lease" sign.
It's a jail. It was built to keep people in.
As Russell noted and as reported by Joselyn King, the walls are fortified. Doors are fortified. Windows are fortified.
The very things that made the building useful for its intended purpose could make adapting it to something else extraordinarily difficult.
And expensive.
So before we start dreaming about the possibilities, we need to know exactly what's possible.
But once we know that, let's have the conversation on the building's future -- a real community conversation.
Could part of the building be converted into county offices? Could it provide space for nonprofits or community organizations? Is there a private developer somewhere who would look at the structure and see possibilities that county government doesn't?
Could the site complement the current operations at the City-County Building?
Could portions of the jail be removed while other sections are saved?
Or would the smartest use of taxpayer money be to tear the entire thing down and begin again?
I don't know. And neither does anyone else right now.
That's what makes this an interesting opportunity.
We've seen this situation play out too many times in Wheeling and throughout the Ohio Valley.
An old building loses its purpose. Everyone agrees something should be done with it. A few ideas get tossed around. Then time passes. Eventually the building has deteriorated to the point that the question isn't what could we do with it, but what we can afford to do with it. Or how much it's going to cost to tear it down.
That doesn't need to happen here.
That also doesn't mean we save a building simply because it's old.
I'm a believer in preserving our history, but preservation has to come with some common sense. There is no victory in spending millions of taxpayer dollars to save a building for which nobody can identify a practical use.
At the same time, there's not much sense in bringing in the wrecking ball before we've given people a chance to think creatively.
That's why, once the building assessment is completed, I'd urge the current Ohio County commissioners -- Randy Wharton, Zach Abraham and Don Nickerson -- to put the findings on the table.
Tell us what can be done. Tell us what can't. Tell us what it might cost. Then ask people for ideas.
Ask architects. Ask developers. Ask business owners. Ask preservationists. Ask nonprofit organizations. Ask the people who live here.
Maybe someone sees something the rest of us don't. And maybe nobody does.
There's something personally interesting to me about seeing this particular story come full circle.
As a young reporter in 1998, I was writing about prisoners moving into that building.
Nearly 30 years later, I'm writing about them moving out.
Back then, the question was how the building would work as a jail.
Today, the question is whether it can work as anything else.
So when that last cell door closes and Ohio County gets the keys back, it would be worth spending a little time answering one question before deciding the building's fate:
If those keys were handed to you, what would you do with the place?
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From the complain-and-you-might-see-action file: I've been meaning to note for the past several weeks that my July 25 column on the current condition of Wheeling's Heritage Trail has made at least some level of difference.
Early last month, while walking the trail from Heritage Port toward North Wheeling one afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the large retaining walls blocks from behind the old Wheeling Inn -- blocks that had blown out and been sitting on a section of the trail for nearly three years -- had been moved.
The stretch of trail between Elm Grove and Tunnel Green also has been cleared considerably, though this warm, wet summer has made that task much more difficult.
City crews did much of the work but I also need to give credit to the volunteers at the Ohio Valley Trail Partners. They've been great stewards of Heritage Trail for years.
John McCabe is editor of The Intelligencer and Wheeling News-Register. From 9-10 a.m. each Friday, he joins Howard Monroe on AM 1600 WKKX to discuss the most pressing issues in Wheeling and the Ohio Valley. Email him at jmccabe@theintelligencer.net.