A crew from Jimmie Harper Construction tears down the pavilion in City Park in October. The city plans to build a new activity and recreation center on the site. (File Photo)

PARKERSBURG — Multiple projects already underway or expected to start this year will shape Parkersburg for years to come.

In October, the nearly 100-year-old City Park Pavilion was razed to make way for a 47,000-square-foot activity and recreation center. The location was the subject of debate among some residents and council members, but it was finalized shortly before the demolition when Parkersburg City Council approved a resolution related to a $15 million bond issue to fund it and a new fire station.

The new station will replace Fire Station 3, the last of three stations built during the Great Depression. Stations 2 and 4 were replaced in 2019 and 2020, respectively, on their previous sites. The new Station 3 will be constructed on Briant Street off Seventh Street, about three-eighths of a mile east of the existing one at 13th and Liberty streets.

It’s a move Fire Chief Jason Matthews said will place an additional 230 structures and approximately 900 residents within the four-minute response time recommended by the National Fire Protection Association.

“We found that … just outside of our desired response time was a part of the east end,” he said.

An excavator from Bosley Construction demolishes the pool at the end of the Southwood Park waterslide on Feb. 4. The pool, pumps, restrooms and more are being replaced for the slide as part of a $950,000 project. (Photo provided by Adam Stout)

“There was a large overlap between Station 2 and Station 3.”

Those stations are only about half a mile apart right now, and the move will not put any locations outside the maximum four-minute response time, Matthews said.

Site preparation on both projects began in December, Mayor Tom Joyce said, “then paused when the weather went south.”

The second half of the renovation of a longstanding Parkersburg attraction got underway this month at the waterslide at Southwood Park. The city allocated $950,000 to replace the pumps, put in a new pool with a zero-entry area, rework the walkway to get rid of the wooden boardwalk that goes up and over the slide and add new restrooms and shade structures, city Engineer Adam Stout said.

“We’re going to reuse another ticket booth from the Memorial Bridge for admissions,” he said.

Site preparation started in December at the location of Parkersburg’s new Fire Station 3 on Briant Street a block from Seventh Street, shown here on Feb. 6, but activity slowed down due to cold and wet weather. (Photo by Evan Bevins)

The city placed one of the booths at Bennett Stump Field in City Park after its renovation in 2023.

Work started on Feb. 3, with the old features and structures being demolished, Stout said.

This follows repairs to the slide itself in 2023.

The Parkersburg Utility Board expects to begin work on a $21 million project to install a granular activated carbon filtration system to remove chemicals like C8, also known as perfluorooctanoic acid or PFOA, from its water. The PUB provides water and sewer service to the city and some surrounding areas.

Long used in the Teflon-manufacturing process at the Washington Works plant south of Parkersburg, C8 has been present in the utility’s water supply for years. It’s part of a family of chemicals called polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that have been linked to thyroid cancer and birth defects and break down very slowly, earning them the nickname “forever” chemicals. That group also includes the substance that replaced C8 at Washington Works, known as GenX.

Despite longstanding concerns over the health risks of PFAS, the PUB’s water never had concentrations high enough to make it part of the group of water systems that received filtration systems paid for by former Washington Works owner DuPont as part of the settlement of a class action lawsuit. And the levels also did not require action under previous U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidelines.

But that changed when the agency issued a new, nonbinding lifetime drinking water advisory of 0.004 parts per trillion in 2022. A strict limit of 4 parts per trillion in drinking water was finalized by the EPA last year.

A project to relocate the Parkersburg Police Department’s shooting range to accommodate the new system is largely finished, PUB Manager Eric Bennett said recently.

As for the filtration project itself, “engineering’s about complete,” he said. “We’re still waiting on some negotiations for assistance from Chemours.”

Chemours is the company, spun off from DuPont, that now owns Washington Works. Bennett said the utility expects to receive some assistance from them with the rest of the cost to be covered by federal money provided to West Virginia’s Clean Water Revolving Fund.

“The hope is that we have it bid out and through the process by mid- to late summer,” he said.

Evan Bevins can be reached at ebevins@newsandsentinel.com