WHEELING — Wheeling’s rollercoaster winter weather has led to at least one benefit. It has offered windows of opportunity to move the $12.3 million Market Street Parking Garage project forward.

After several scheduled and rescheduled dates, a continuous concrete pour at the new garage site took place on March 1. Despite an unseasonably warm February with a weekly treat of 70-plus-degree days, a number of dates for the 500-yard concrete pour at the new parking garage had to be rescheduled because of rain.

The date on which the big pour actually occurred was another unusually pleasant winter day, with a high reaching 73 degrees. And warm weather days can be very helpful, especially when crews are pouring concrete in the winter.

Wheeling City Manager Robert Herron said another big pour is expected to take place this month, according to general contractor Carl Walker Construction of Pittsburgh. Originally, the second continuous concrete pour was scheduled for Wednesday of this week, but that, too, was rescheduled.

Officials indicated the second continuous pour will likely take place next Wednesday or the following Wednesday on March 29.

Several transit mixer trucks will again line up along Chapline Street downtown to bring a continuous supply of concrete to the job site. A large concrete pump on a boom is used to place the material precisely where it needs to be.

The first big pour set the concrete ramp from the ground level to the first level of the new parking garage, which will be six levels high when completed.

“The concrete pour went very well,” Herron said of the March 1 endeavor. “It began at about 6 a.m., and they started setting up at about 4 a.m. They were done with the entire pour at about 3 p.m. They had 260 yards of concrete poured by approximately 10 a.m. that Wednesday morning.”

Favorable conditions allowed the work to continue efficiently, Herron noted. The pour needed to take place in dry conditions with no threat of rain, and the work had originally been scheduled to take place from around 4 a.m. to midnight continuously during one day. However, crews were able to get the concrete poured by early afternoon.

“It was a perfect situation,” Herron said.

The second big concrete pour is expected to involve the same amount of concrete and take the same amount of time as the first one, the city manager noted. After that, there will be a number of smaller concrete pours taking place as the new garage continues to emerge into the downtown skyline at the corner of Market and 11th streets.

Despite the number of warm days this winter, the concrete has to be poured when it is dry and has to be covered with insulating blankets when it is being poured in weather that is between about 40 and 60 degrees.

“There are going to be a few more pours that would be subject to weather and low temperatures,” Herron said. “The contractor has a date in mind – sometime in April – as to when they’ll be out of the woods on that issue.”

Herron indicated that being able to avoid the use of insulating blankets during the pours could potentially save a significant amount of time and money. So far the Market Street Parking Garage project is on track for its target completion date of Oct. 1 of this year.

Once completed, the facility will be a fully automated public parking garage with several designated spaces for future tenants of the nearby Historic Wheeling-Pitt Lofts.

The garage will include electric car charging stations and retail spaces on the street level.