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Growth is all around

If you have been following the weekly installments of our annual Progress Edition, you’ve had the chance to learn about positive things that are happening across the Tri-State Area.

The third piece of the Progress Edition puzzle is included in today’s edition, and on its pages you will find things that help enhance our quality of life, with topics ranging from the Nutcracker Village that brightens the downtown Steubenville area each Christmas season to the many outdoor concerts held across the region during the summer.

Feb. 23’s installment will offer an update about the status of health care and education in the region, and Pride and Progress Month will come to an end on Feb. 28, when you’ll find an examination of local business, industry and transportation.

While each of the sections on its own offers interesting reading, if you look at all five together, you will get a good snapshot of where our area stands and, probably more important, where it is headed.

If you are still not convinced there’s growth in our area, here are a few reminders:

≤ Work is continuing on the expansion project at Trinity Medical Center West. When it is completed sometime next year, the five-story tower will add more than 80 private rooms for patients and include new public spaces, as well as allow offices that had been housed at Trinity Medical Center East to be integrated into the west campus.

Care has been taken to work Trinity’s heritage into the 183,000-square-foot addition. While located on the site of the former St. John Medical Center, the addition will feature architectural cues that will pay homage to the former Ohio Valley Hospital.

That expansion comes with a price tag of $75 million.

¯ Go a little bit farther west, and you run into Eastern Gateway Community College. In September 2018, the college unveiled the Gator Center, which allowed the school to put its admissions, the business office, financial aid, counseling and advising services, its college bookstore and its career services in one centralized location, which is a plus for students and staff members.

Part of the project included the construction of a new entrance that is highly visible from Sunset Boulevard and has given the school a fresher appearance.

The price tag of the 11,100-square-foot facility was $2.1 million.

¯ Sitting in the middle of Wintersville is the recently completed Center for Hope. It’s an addition to the Wintersville United Methodist Church and includes a fellowship area that can seat more than 300 people and features a raised stage as well as professional-quality sound and lighting; a commercial-style kitchen and pantry; a separate gym area that includes a full-size basketball court that can be used for other activities, including volleyball and pickleball; a music room; several storage areas; and an elevator.

Members of the community have had the chance to tour the facility the past week during a series of open house events, and they have come away impressed.

It opens up a lot of possibilities for growth around the church, which has served the community for the last 180 years and has stood at the intersection of Main Street and Fernwood Road for more than 130 years.

The 12,500-square-foot center cost $3.6 million to build.

¯ The Indian Creek Local School District is getting ready to start construction on its new schools just a few miles farther west from the church. Included will be the new Indian Creek High School, which will sit on land that has served as a practice field across from the current high school and next to Robert Kettlewell Memorial Stadium. Work will include demolition of the current high school and Wintersville Elementary School, a building that began its life as Buchanan Junior High School in the 1960s.

Those elementary pupils will be housed in the new Cross Creek Elementary School, which will be built on the site of the old Bantam Ridge school.

When you include the costs associated with the new buildings with renovations that will be made at Hills Elementary School in Mingo Junction, all of that work checks in at around $63 million.

Add up those numbers, and you get a total of $143.7 million that has been spent, is being spent or will be spent on construction work in the areas in and around Wintersville and Steubenville.

And that doesn’t include other projects, including, for instance, the indoor fun center that’s scheduled to be built inside the former Sears store at the Fort Steuben Mall; Dunkin’ coffee and doughnut shops being built at the corners of Sunset Boulevard and Brady Circle in Steubenville and Main Street and Canton Road in Wintersville; or the countless other improvements being made to businesses and private residences that line Sunset Boulevard and Main Street.

All of those investments show there is a strong belief that our area’s future looks good, and they all show there is reason for optimism.

(Gallabrese, a resident of Steubenville, is executive editor of the Herald-Star and The Weirton Daily Times.)

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