COMMENTARY
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – The start of a new year always abounds with optimism as we think about the possibilities in front of us. For Monongalia County, the ideas and possibilities conceived of years ago could come to fruition in 2018.
“I think the public and the county commission said, if we’re giving you the money we want to see something,” County Commissioner Tom Bloom recently stated on Morgantown AM.
“Next year [2018] we’re going to have that track at the Mountaineer Center and the swimming complex after that. You’re going to see roads built. You’re going to see development at the West Ridge Business Park. You have the Courthouse Square being completed. Those are things that are immediately tangible.”
Construction is already underway on the $45 million Mountaineer Center at Mylan Park that will provide the community with a state-of-the-art track-and-field facility as well as an aquatic center. The track is scheduled to open by September 2018 with the pool to follow in 2019. The aquatic center is the result of planning and negotiations that go back to 2014.
Monongalia County is entering into a first of its kind collaboration with the state Division of Highways to improve area roads. The county is going to put up $150,000 that the DOH is going to match with nearly a $1 million to fix River Road and part of DuPont Road. It’s a collaboration that has never been tried in the state but illustrates to the DOH the county’s commitment to repairing its own roads.
An estimated two million cubic feet of dirt has been moved at the West Ridge Business Park over the last couple of years and the site on the west side of Interstate 79 is nearly ready for the construction of actual buildings. Over the next 12 months we should see the first structures built in the Tax Increment Finance District that many thought, including me, was all about a new baseball stadium.
The bigger picture is now coming into focus.
“What people don’t realize it is a process. Something good doesn’t come easy. I wish we could just snap our fingers and make it happen but that’s not the process,” said Commissioner Ed Hawkins.
And commissioners believe those projects are just the start.
Discussions have just been initiated on possibly building a multi-county mountain bike trail in North Central West Virginia, which Commissioner Hawkins believes could be an economic boon for the county and eventually rival the Hatfield-McCoy trail in the southern part of the state.
Road construction projects funded, in part, by the road bond approved in October are scheduled to begin with more infrastructure projects on the horizon.
“The reissuance of bonds, possibly to save as much as $9 million, to complete the road that will go all the way to the aquatic center is actually a very big entity,” pointed out Hawkins.
As these projects that have been years in the making now start to take shape, you can’t help but wonder at the start of a new year, what new ideas are brewing to keep Monongalia County moving forward.