PARKERSBURG, W.Va. (WTAP) – On June 30, 2023 the Ross Foundation made a large, gracious donation to the West Virginia University at Parkersburg Foundation.
That donation was made to help with a multi-million dollar tech center expansion that WVU-P is working on.
The project will include an east and west wing. The west wing will be used for classrooms, education space and other learning areas while the east wing will be used for leasing space.
“The future is full of a lot of excitement because this right here will be the WVU PARKERSBURG innovation and technology center and inside of it we will house our computer science and computer information technology degrees as well as our workforce and economic development programming,” said WVU-P President, Dr. Torie Jackson
After purchasing the property in November of 2023 the WVU-P foundation has had to start gutting the building to build what they envisioned from the beginning.
“It had no heat and had sat empty for two years so you can imagine what that does to a structure. We didn’t want to have anymore damage done to the building and we had a lot of roofs that were of great concern, there were some spots in the building where plastic had been put at the top of the ceilings and a water hose was put there with duct tape to divert water because there were no funds to actually fix the leaks,” said Dr. Torie Jackson.
Starting from the bottom was no easy task for Dr. Jackson and the WVU-P team but as they’ve started they look forward to the summer of work ahead.
“This summer we have a lot that we’re doing so we are continuing to fix the roofs. You can look and see that most of the windows and doors are very outdated and we have a congressional allocation through the Wood County development authority to replace all of the windows and doors. We’re also doing an asbestos removal project and we are putting in the sprinkler system and to do that we have to take down all of the ceilings,” she said.
WVU-P and the construction team is working on a 510 day renovation window and hopes that the west wing can be completed by August of 2025 and the east wing will be completed by August of 2026.
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