The exterior of the nearly completed Wood County Resiliency Center. (Photo by Gwen Sour)
PARKERSBURG – Construction on the Wood County Resiliency Center is in the final stages and construction is expected to be completed in the next few weeks.
The facility is equipped to host a variety of events, but is also designed to help the community should an incident like COVID-19 or the Ames plant fire in 2017 occur again.
The bathrooms at the main entrance to the facility are fully accessible and each have two showers, one of which is also wheelchair accessible. The building’s hallways are wide and the doorways wider to accommodate hospital beds in the event of a crisis and to create a triage room if needed.
There are many different conference rooms in different sizes, from small to extra large rooms.
“We have an extra-large model that we designed so that we would have room for it in the event of a mass accident, yes,” Said Commissioner Blair Couch. “But if we had a trade show, we would have space for exhibitors, so people could also use it as a meeting room, so it would be versatile.”
Wood County Commissioner Blair Couch shows off the industrial kitchen equipment at the Wood County Resiliency Center. (Photo by Jess Mancini)
There is one main conference room that can accommodate up to 800 people. The room has a partition wall in the middle that allows the room to be divided into two separate sessions for a conference or meeting.
According to Couch, the state health department recommended providing food distribution for the relief center, so a commercial kitchen was built into the construction project. The kitchen is located next to the conference room, which will provide catering options for the space outside of disaster relief operations once a pre-approved list of catering vendors is established.
There is a large garage in the back half of the building where maintenance trailers can be brought in. When the trailers are not in storage, the plan is to offer drive-through vaccinations. There are screens hanging on the sides that can display information telling people what they need to prepare, such as identity verification licenses, etc.
The building also provides space for a replacement district court with temporary holding cells in the event of overcrowding or problems with the use of the current district court.
“If the building were closed for some reason, we could come here,” said Couch, “Sally (port) here, so you can come right here if there’s anything wrong with the moorings or anything.”
The final step is to decide how the building will be maintained and managed.
“We have to decide on the property manager and whether he will be an employee of the district or a contract employee,” said Couch.
Because construction is not yet complete and a property manager is still being sought, there is no set opening date, but Couch hopes the building will be open to the public by the end of the year.
Gwen Sour can be reached at [email protected]
