FAIRMONT — You don’t have to look very hard to see what Fairmont’s Beltline neighborhood once was.
For decades, the Beltline was an industrial and community destination for the Marion County city that was always on the clock.
Day and night, from the early 1900s on, the Beltline jumped like a Louis Jordan bandstand.
Factories lined up like LEGOs behind 12th Street, including the Monongah Glass Co., known across the region and nation for its decorative lamps, goblets, plates and other fine glassware.
Tightly packed duplexes for those workers did the same on Virginia Avenue.
Coal cars from the B&O Railroad clanked and banged 24 hours a day, fully laden with West Virginia’s chief export, as they were.
You had breweries, eateries, a municipal pool and East-West Stadium, a masonry marvel built with Works Progress Administration money that was the big football venue for a county that boasted seven high schools through the late 1970s.
These days, the stadium hosts even more soccer and lacrosse games — which, as Fairmont City Manager Travis Blosser said recently, just might make a good marketing metaphor for the Beltline these days.
“We can’t bring it back to what it was,” he said of the neighborhood, “but we can reinvent it, for its time.”
Beltline 2.0?
Much like the revisioning of Morgantown’s once-dilapidated Wharf District, Blosser sees a 21st century Beltline dealing in the commerce of community, with a proposed network of recreational facilities and playing fields — and the planned extension of the West Fork Rail-Trail — as the start.
Visit fairmontwv.gov and type “Beltline” in the search field for a full rundown on the project, which includes computer renderings and an extensive “frequently asked” questions section.
Meanwhile, the hearts-and-minds phase began in earnest a couple of years ago, City Planner Shae Strait said, with a series of community forums.
Said forums were well-attended, to the relief of the city planner.
That is, the attendees went beyond the core group of citizens who attend every city council meeting and county commission meeting, no matter what.
“We saw a lot of unfamiliar faces and that’s good,” Strait said, “because we have to start from somewhere.”
Make that, climb up from somewhere, he said.
For decades, Fairmont saw its economic fortunes wax and wane, as Clarksburg to the south and Morgantown to the north both prospered.
In 1969, the Middletown Mall, then West Virginia’s first enclosed shopping mall, opened outside of the city, in the now-incorporated town of White Hall.
It didn’t take long for all those shops on Fairmont’s once-bustling Adams Street business district to relocate.
More often than not, the venerable “Miner’s Bulletin Board” on local radio gave the repeating “Will not work-will not work,” refrain for shifts to stay home — as the demand for coal fluctuated and the mines began to tap out, anyway.
Westinghouse and Owen-Illinois on the East Side? Both shuttered.
All in the marketing …
Why the Beltline as a marketing catalyst?
Because it’s still a bustling place, relatively speaking, Strait said.
A handful of companies remain, he said. People still fill the bleachers at East-West Stadium and the neighborhood is now home to West Fairmont Middle School.
Even better, he said, the Beltline was zoned for mixed-use development years ago.
For Strait, it’s Civic Marketing 101.
“If you’re a company or a family moving in, or considering a move anywhere, what are the first things you look at?” he said.
“Well, you look at the first things people always say you look at. You look at roads and schools. And housing. You look at medical facilities and recreational facilities.”
“The Beltline’s already here,” Blosser said. As he said, it’s a lot easier to redevelop than it is to build anew.
For now, the city is working out eminent domain particulars concerning a now-empty box factory behind East-West Stadium built in 1902 as part of the Monongah Glass Co. complex.
Once that happens, Blosser said, that structure could be leveled, and the first shovels of earth could be turned, for the re-imagining of the Beltline.
Right now, he doesn’t want to assign timelines or budget lines to the project, he said.
“We’re still in the beginning of the beginning,” he said, “but there are still also some things we can do.”
That includes temporary reassigning of current two-way streets to one-way affairs with other traffic-calming measures added — again, temporarily, he stressed.
“We can field test a lot of it,” he said. “We say to our residents, ‘OK, here’s what it might look like, if you guys really want this stuff.’”
Beyond the Beltline
For now, Blosser and Strait are both optimistic for the Beltline.
Blosser grew up in Fairmont and Strait hails from Shinnston, a once-and-former coal camp in Harrison County that held on, despite downturns in the coal industry and its flat-out destruction by a devastating tornado in 1944.
As north-central West Virginia natives they also know where Fairmont is now, economically.
The city’s Gateway Connector is making for easier access to the city from Interstate 79.
WVU Medicine took over Fairmont General Hospital, which closed at the height of the pandemic after years of languishing under absentee landlords.
Mon Health Medical Center also opened a hospital in Middletown Commons, the site of the former Middletown Mall, which was re-imagined by Morgantown developers Richard and David Biafora.
Add in Fairmont State University, Pierpont Community and Technical College and the I-79 Technology Park in South Fairmont, which is home to the region’s burgeoning high-tech industry, the city manager said, name-checking other civic attributes.
And, he said, there’s the Beltline, which could be Fairmont’s version of Morgantown’s Wharf District.
“Could be,” as the optimum qualifier, he said.
“The potential is almost limitless,” Blosser said, “if people want it.”
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