Jefferson County Innovation Center nears completion in Mingo Junction
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MINGO JUNCTION -- When it opens about a month from now, the Jefferson County Innovation Center will be a building that serves not just the Indian Creek Local School District, but residents of the surrounding area as well.
“We’re fortunate that we’re getting an asset for the community,” said John Belt, Indian Creek’s assistant superintendent. “It’s completely grant-funded, so it’s not a tax issue to further burden the public with. Beyond that, the facility is going to provide some much-needed services for the entire county. It’s not just an Indian Creek building.”
Belt was speaking before leading members of the Indian Creek Board of Education through the nearly complete structure before the start of Thursday’s meeting in the library at Indian Creek Middle School. Crews from Hammond Construction were finishing up work for the day inside the building and preparing the outside so the process of laying asphalt could begin today.
The one-story, 14,000-square-foot building that sits next to Hills Elementary School will include an alternative school, a job assistance center, a day treatment facility for pupils in grades K-8 and a walk-in health clinic.
“We’ll have the walk-in clinic hosted by WVU Medicine for the people here in Mingo Junction, which is a huge asset,” Belt said. “You know, the residents of Mingo have to go to either the hospital, the walk-in clinic in Wintersville, across the river or down the river for medical care. This will be a big, big asset for them.”
Construction on the facility began in June 2025 after the district learned it had received $6.5 million in funding through the Appalachian Community Innovation Centers Grant Program. Indian Creek was one of 14 recipients of the funding, which totaled $88 million. The money is being administered by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission.
“We’re excited about it,” Superintendent T.C. Chappelear said. “The requirements of the grant were to provide for public education, health care and workforce. And that’s what we have.”
He added that the Jefferson County Educational Service Center would be providing education through its Quest Center alternative school. Health care will be provided through Allied Integrated Care’s day treatment facility and WVU Medicine’s clinic, and the Jefferson County Community Action Council and OhioMeansJobs will have a satellite office where area residents will be able to look for employment.
“We developed the plan and the grant application not with the Indian Creek school district in mind, but with all of Jefferson County in mind,” Chappelear said. “We just really feel that this is going to provide a benefit to the whole county.”
In the youth partial facility, pupils in grades K-8 who have mental health concerns will receive part-day counseling and part-day education, Belt explained.
“It’s a two-fold thing, where you could have a child who’s struggling in a regular school setting who might need some services,” he said. “Or, you could have a student who is coming out of a residential facility, and this would serve as a step-down to get them adjusted to being in an environment where they have an opportunity to be more successful when they go back to their home school. It’s going to be something that’s heavily used by all of the schools in the county.”
In addition to classrooms and an extended learning area, the building has a gymnasium with a single basketball hoop, two batting cages and a floor that’s marked for basketball and pickleball.
Access to each of the areas will be controlled through a key fob system, Belt explained, adding that in the future, members of the community will be able to use the gymnasium through a fob and a dedicated entrance.
The building has been designed to ensure that members of the community who come to utilize specific services will be isolated from the students. For example, those seeking a job or residents coming for treatment at the walk-in clinic will be isolated in their particular areas, Belt said.
“We have high hopes for the building,” said Dr. Ted Starkey, a longtime Indian Creek board member. “It’s been designed to have everyone feel secure about the operation, and I’m really happy about that.”
A ribbon-cutting for the center is scheduled for 6 p.m. Aug. 13. Classroom areas will be ready for use when school starts Aug. 24, while the walk-in clinic and the OhioMeansJobs office will open in the fall. The center, district officials said, will help the entire area.
“That’s the whole idea. That was the intention, always, from the beginning, to bring in something positive,” Starkey said. “We have talked about that for years, and we thought this was a good way to execute that vision.”
It will be the latest new building constructed in the district and comes on the heels of the $63 million construction projects that included a new Indian Creek High School, a new Cross Creek Elementary School and improvements at Hills Elementary School and Indian Creek Middle School.
“We’ve got solid leadership from T.C. Chappelear, and we’ve got a very experienced board that cares about promoting the community and is very student-centered in all of their endeavors,” Belt said. “And, we are blessed to have a community that actually showed up at the ballot box, after years and years of trying. When you look back to what our facilities were like to what they are currently, it’s night and day.”