Photo by Eric Ayres The Washington Avenue Bridge is expected to remain closed to all traffic until October of next year. The bridge was closed earlier this month, and the West Virginia Department of Transportation has awarded a $5.3 million contract to replace the bridge. Officials in the city of Wheeling are exploring the possibility of initiating a relief program for businesses in this area that will be impacted by the bridge’s closure over the next several months.

WHEELING — Officials in the city of Wheeling are looking into the possibility of providing relief to businesses impacted by the nearly year-long closure of the Washington Avenue Bridge.

At the beginning of this month, the heavily traveled bridge over Wheeling Creek was closed for a total replacement project. The West Virginia Department of Transportation awarded a $5,342,000 contract to Charles J. Merlo Inc. of Mineral Point, Pa., for the work.

Demolition of the current span and construction of the new one is expected to continue for several months well into next year. The work is scheduled to be completed by October 2026.

Washington Avenue is a major traffic artery in the neighborhood — connecting National Road to the area of Interstate 70 at the intersection of Mount de Chantal Road and the only access to WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital.

The bridge closure severs that traffic artery for nearly a year, limiting access and creating detours to and from residential neighborhoods and several businesses in the area.

On the same day the bridge was officially closed to traffic, Ward 5 Councilman Ty Thorngate requested that the City Manager’s Office explore the possibility of creating some type of relief program to aid local businesses that will inevitably be impacted by the bridge’s closure.

Thorngate noted that the city created such a program a couple of years ago when the state’s $37 million Downtown Streetscape Project impacted several businesses in the area of Main and Market streets. Sections of downtown streets were either totally or partially closed for extended periods of time while crews demolished sidewalks and installed new storm sewers beneath the roadways, creating a sprawling construction zone that kept the regular flow of traffic away from downtown businesses.

“We did have a successful program with the Streetscape,” Wheeling City Manager Robert Herron noted. “We can see if there’s a way to model something similar to that to that project.”

During the Streetscape work, city leaders came up with a relief package that provided parking validations for customers and Business and Occupational Tax relief for impacted, eligible businesses. A fund was also set up that offered lost revenue recovery for businesses that were negatively impacted by the loss of customers due to construction-related issues.

The downtown relief package was designed for small retail businesses with under $1 million in annual sales, and city leaders estimated that 21 businesses in the downtown area qualified for that program. The city set aside a total of $300,000 for the lost revenue fund, and utilized sales figures from each business during previous years to determine revenue losses.

This week, officials indicated that no proposal has been put together to present to city council at this point, but city leaders have indicated that they would support such a measure. The city has not released figures related to how many small businesses are likely to be impacted by the Washington Avenue Bridge closure.

“The bridge is going to be completely demolished,” Herron noted, explaining that neither vehicular nor pedestrian traffic will be able to cross the creek until October of next year. Even before actual demolition begins, the existing bridge was to be closed to pedestrians, as well. “There will be no access at all.”

Over the past several years, the Washington Avenue Bridge — designed as a floating cantilever bridge — has remained structurally sound and able to maintain vehicular traffic, but it has received poor ratings during inspections. This ultimately led to its load limit being reduced to 5 tons. School buses and other large vehicles have not been permitted to cross the bridge in recent years.

Officials noted that once the new bridge is installed, the span will be able to accommodate heavier vehicles for the first time in a long time.

Herron added that a number of plaques that for decades have graced the entrances on both sides of the bridge are expected to be removed and saved during the construction phase of the project.