T-L Photo/GAGE VOTA The future Belmont County Health Department is slated to be completed by fall and open by the end of 2026.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — The Belmont County Health Department construction project is on schedule for a fall completion.

The new building will combine the county’s health department, coroner’s office and records departments.

Belmont County Commissioner J.P. Dutton said Grae-Con Construction is making significant progress on the building itself.

He said the current plan is for the building to be completed in the fall and for all three entities to move into the building before the end of the year.

“For those that have been able to kind of drive past the site recently, I’m sure they’ve noticed that the exterior has really come a long way and the interior is coming along nicely as well,” Dutton said. “Site work outside of the building has also started over the last few weeks. It’s done substantial dirt work near the Belmont County Sanitary Sewer District’s water department lay down yard there. Dirt work, in terms of preparation for the rest of the site work, which will be the parking areas.”

He added there also could be changes to Ohio 331.

Dutton said the Ohio Department of Transportation is likely to install a right-turn lane coming off the interstate heading north onto Ohio 331.

“This is a great project. You always wish these projects would move a little bit quicker and usually wish there’s a little more funding. But I think we have a great project,” Dutton said. “I mean, the coroner is going to have space for the first time ever, which is long overdue. The records department is something that we’ve been working on since before the pandemic, frankly. And it was a thing that got brought into this overarching project that probably delayed it a little bit. But at the end of the day, I think we’re going to have one of the finest record centers in this part of the state.”

He added the new building will allow the records department to have a permanent home. Dutton said the records department has moved from building to building for several years, and he is excited it finally will have a permanent location.

“We’ve been consolidating a lot of those records over the last few years. And we’ll probably do an update through our meeting at some point prior to moving into the building on just some of the work that our director has been doing to prepare for this move and kind of what this move means to the county,” Dutton said. “And then obviously the health department as well, it probably had the best of the spaces of these three entities. The coroner had none and records has a pretty poor building currently. Not that the health department was in great space either, but there were real limitations on what the department could do based on the space they currently have.”

He added the new building will allow for better and eventually more programming through the health department for the county.

Coroner Amanda Fisher said she is optimistic about finally having her own office.

“I’m very excited that this plan is finally coming together, and that we should be ready to open in the fall,” Fisher said. “It has been a very long awaited and anticipated step forward.”