Greater Wheeling Regional Plan

The Wheeling Region has a long and rich history. It is where West Virginia declared its “independence” from Virginia. It is the middle of the Northern Panhandle, the industrial heartland of West Virginia for much of the 20th century. It has been, and continues to be, an industrial and commercial center.

However, the passage of time and the change that it has brought has not always been beneficial to the region. As a result, leaders in the region have begun a process to reevaluate and reinvent the Wheeling area and improve the regional economy.

The Wheeling Area Chamber of Commerce engaged the WVU Bureau of Business and Economic Research to create a regional plan to guide development. The result is the Greater Wheeling Regional Plan project, consisting of three detailed reports on the Wheeling economy—Economic Profile, Industrial Cluster Analysis, and Workforce and Educational Assessment—a survey of local residents, and finally the Action Plan for Economic Development in the Wheeling region. Overall, this project will help determine the future development direction for the Wheeling Region.