OVMC Demolition Beginning Next Week
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Demolition is scheduled to start Monday at the former Ohio Valley Medical Center, with the Northwood Health Systems building the first to be razed.
The structure is one of seven on OVMC's former campus that will be demolished over the next 10 months. The razing will make available more than 800,000 square feet of vacant space inside the structures.
Once cleared, the space will be taken up by WVU Medicine's regional cancer center. The facility will employ about 500 people and see 40,000 patients each year.
With this major step in the project set to begin next Monday or Tuesday, Mayor Glenn Elliott is thrilled to see what he labels the "strategic, but also controversial" decision to acquire the OVMC properties made by City Council four years ago pay off.
Instead of letting the campus sit vacant and deteriorating for "years to come," Elliott emphasized the city council's vision of remarketing the remaining buildings for re-adaptive use. This vision has already come to fruition at the new headquarters of the Wheeling Police Department, which occupies one building from the former OVMC campus.
"When it became clear that the existing buildings were not feasible for this purpose, the City of Wheeling and the Ohio County Commission stepped up to provide the bulk of the funding for demolition," described Elliott. "Fortunately, we were able to find in WVU Medicine a trusted third party willing to invest tens of millions of dollars in a state-of-the-art new cancer treatment facility on the site of this campus,"
The "tens of millions of dollars" that will be invested in the building includes a contract of $8.6 million to raze the seven former hospital and medical office buildings on the campus.
The WVU Medicine's contractor for the project, F.R. Beinke Wrecking Inc. of New Jersey, has been performing asbestos abatement on the buildings for the past "couple of months," according to City Manager Robert Herron.
With "significant progress" made on the preparation of the buildings for demolition, including the turning over of a time capsule discovered on the property to the Friends of Wheeling, the start of the razing is set to begin next week.
Businesses and property owners in the circumference area of the project have been sent letters notifying them when the demolition will begin. Herron expects no road closures to occur with the demolition of the first building.
In March, the demolition of the Center Wheeling Parking Garage will coincide with the demolition of the West Tower. Due to this, Chapline Street will be closed between 20th Street to 22nd Street.
The closure is required to fit the equipment needed to dismantle the bridge between the parking structure and OVMC's campus, which is the city's responsibility to remove. The structure will be dismantled piece by piece, not demolished, requiring ample space for vehicles taking part in the operation.
While the bridge is being dismantled, demolition is also set to begin on OVMC's West Tower, meaning the road would need to be closed to accommodate that project.
"By the time the city has begun taking apart the bridge, WVU Medicine's contractor will have begun tearing down the West Tower, which will be right next to that operation" explained Herron. "That's a big building, so the road would need to be closed for that too."
While he does not know the exact date the road closure will begin, Herron noted demolition of the Center Wheeling Parking Garage will begin on March 4.
The Wheeling Police Department Headquarters will still be accessible during the closure.
With this major undertaking in the project occurring in only three months, Herron appreciates how communicative WVU Medicine has been with the city. He added the contractor has been "very responsive" as well.
Communication between the three groups has included WVU Medicine informing the city of the sequence in which the seven buildings will go down. After the Northwood building, the Nurse's Residence will be the next to go. The last building to be razed will be the West Tower.
"This has been a two-year process to get to this point," noted Herron. "We're looking forward to the next 10 months of the demolition being completed."
After demolition, the construction of the cancer center will begin, which Herron labeled as a "real game changer" for health care in the region. The hospital will service not only Wheeling, but other parts of the Northern Panhandle, including eastern Ohio and Western Pennsylvania.
"While the final result here -- a shiny, new regional cancer center that will bring hundreds of jobs and help revitalize Center Wheeling -- is still several years away, it is very gratifying to see this public-private partnership move from paper and spreadsheets into action," added Elliott.