Wheeling NHA Wins This Year’s Great American Main Street Award
Wheeling, WV (April 1, 2019)
Wheeling Heritage was acknowledged for its excellent work in historic preservation and community revitalization last week when it was named one of the three winners of the 2019 Great American Main Street Award. Wheeling Heritage is the nonprofit organization that manages the Wheeling National Heritage Area in West Virginia.
Caption: View of Wheeling’s Centre Market District, showing a brick and steel market house building on the left and a row of businesses on the right. The district revolves around its two historic market houses, with the 1853 structure being the oldest cast iron market house in the country. (Credit: Ben Muldrow)
Main Street America’s national award recognizes communities for their excellence in comprehensive, preservation-based commercial district revitalization. Three winners for this year’s award were selected by a jury of community development professionals and leaders in the fields of economic development. The other two recipients were Alberta Main Street in Portland, OR, and Wausau River District in Wausau, WI.
Wheeling Heritage has focused on revitalizing downtown Wheeling through historic preservation, community development, and the arts. When Wheeling’s Main Street program was launched in 2015, the downtown vacancy rate stood at 32 percent. Now, after generating nearly $50 million in total investment, the vacancy rate has decreased to 15 percent and 124 buildings have seen improvements.
The organization has also worked to cultivate an increasingly strong small business community. They launched an innovative live community crowd-funding event for new business ideas called “Show of Hands” and brought in an international entrepreneur-training program to assist new business owners. The efforts are paying off: over the past three years, downtown Wheeling has added 37 new businesses, and thanks to a growing downtown shopping, dining, and arts scene, all anchored by an impressive array of historic architecture, more people are living in downtown Wheeling than ever before.
“We’ve been successful because we are cognizant of the ever-changing nature of our community. While we’ve taken great strides, our work isn’t done,” said Alex Weld, Project and Outreach Manager at Wheeling Heritage. “We continuously evaluate and adapt our programming to address pressing needs in the community, which we feel is the best way to help Wheeling continue to flourish.”
The Wheeling Suspension Bridge, built in 1849, crosses the Ohio River, linking the eastern and western sections of the historic National Road that led Americans west. (Credit: Ben Muldrow)
A group of dancers in traditional Greek costume perform at the annual Greek Festival in Wheeling. Wheeling Heritage provides a grant to support the festival, which celebrates the largest Greek community in West Virginia. (Credit: WV Tourism Office)
(Note: Wheeling Heritage is the DBA/“doing business as” name for Wheeling National Heritage Area Corporation, the legal managing entity of Wheeling NHA.)