Wood County Resiliency Center gears up for opening by end of year
The exterior of the nearly completed Wood County Resiliency Center. (Photo by Gwen Sour)
Wood County Commissioner Blair Couch shows off the industrial kitchen tools in the Wood County Resiliency Center. (Photo by Jess Mancini)
The exterior of the nearly completed Wood County Resiliency Center. (Photo by Gwen Sour)
Wood County Commissioner Blair Couch shows off the industrial kitchen tools in the Wood County Resiliency Center. (Photo by Jess Mancini)
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PARKERSBURG -- Development is in the final stages for the Wood County Resiliency Center as it is anticipated that construction will be completed in the next few weeks.
The facility is equipped to host various events but is also designed to help aid the community if an incident like COVID-19 or the Ames Plant fire from 2017 were to happen again.
Bathrooms by the facility's main entrance are completely accessible and include two showers in each, one of which is also accessible. The halls of the building are wide and the doorways are wider to help accommodate hospital beds during a crisis and create a triage space if needed.
There are many different conference rooms of varying sizes ranging from small ones to an extra-large room.
"We have an extra-large, we designed it so if you had a mass casualty event we would have room for it, yeah," Commissioner Blair Couch said. "But if we had a trade show, we'd have room for exhibitors, that way people could also use it for convention spaces so it has multi-purpose."
There is a main conference space that can house up to 800 people. The room will have a center divider that offers the ability to split the room into two separate sessions for a conference or a convention.
According to Couch, the state health department recommended having food distribution available for the relief center, so they included an industrial kitchen as part of the construction project. The kitchen is off the conference room which, outside of disaster aid, offers catering opportunities for the space once a pre-approved list of caterers has been made.
Toward the back half of the building, there is a large garage space where maintenance trailers can be brought inside. When the trailers are not being stored, there are plans to offer drive-through vaccinations. Screens hang to the sides that can display information to tell people what to get ready such as licenses for identification verification and so on.
The building also holds space for a backup magistrate court with temporary holding cells if there is either overflow or issues with using the current magistrate court.
"If that building was shut down for a reason, we could come over here," said Couch, "Sally [port] here, that way you can go straight here if there's something with any of the holding stuff or anything like that."
The final piece is deciding how the building will be maintained and managed.
"We have to decide about the building manager and whether that building manager will be a county employee or a contracted employee," said Couch.
There is not a set date for the opening due to construction wrapping up and the hunt for a building manager, but Couch hopes the building will open to the public by the end of the year.
Gwen Sour can be reached at gsour@newsandsentinel.com