Where Do You Start? Rebuilding a Neighborhood, One Win at a Time

Before you talk about rebuilding a place, you have to remember what it was.

East Wheeling is home — but the whole Ohio Valley raised me. I spent my early years in Steubenville and Weirton before we moved to Wheeling when I was around seven or eight, and I went back and forth across the area as a teenager. Still, for most of my life East Wheeling has been home, and we had a lot of fun here. It was a tight-knit community — the kind of place where neighbors knew each other, looked out for each other's kids, and you were never far from somebody who had your back. I cherish my time all across the Valley, and the people I grew up with — a lot of whom are still my friends today. And for a long time, you almost never heard East Wheeling written about or talked about in a positive light. That's part of why it meant so much recently to see the neighborhood get a little shine — like when the Tough as Nails Urban Challenge sent runners up the 400-step "Stairway to Heaven" right through East Wheeling and put a piece of the city on display that a lot of people forgot was even here. Watching folks take notice, and watching people start to buy back in, told me something: the story isn't finished.

It didn't happen by accident. In the mid-to-late '90s, East Wheeling went through a slow, deliberate disinvestment. Housing stopped getting maintained, and a lot of it was removed outright — torn down instead of fixed. The population dropped dramatically, here and across the whole city. Little League sports dried up. After-school programming disappeared. And a generation of young Black men were swept up in mass incarceration, a lot of them unfairly sentenced. Pull those things out of a neighborhood — stable homes, the people who filled them, places for kids to play, programs to keep them busy, and the fathers and brothers who anchor families — and you get exactly the condition we're living in today.

But when I look around, I don't see a dead end. I see a blank surface. East Wheeling is almost a clean slate — ready to be reshaped and molded into what could be a generational transformation. The bones are still here. The history is still here. The people are still here. What's been missing is somebody willing to name the condition honestly and go to work on it.

That's my aim and my purpose: point out the condition, and work toward solutions. And we're looking for people who want to be part of that work.

It can't be rebuilt overnight. So the real question is: where do you start?

It starts with the courage to try — and the stubbornness to stick with it no matter what's in front of you. Be collaborative. Then pick one thing you can actually move, and build as much momentum as you can, because momentum is what pulls resources toward you. You generate enough force in one place and the rest starts to follow.

That's exactly what we've been doing, and it's working. Our first year of AMPLIFY community events — the Father's Day Cookout, the Back to School Bash, the Labor Day event — served around 500 residents, funded entirely through community donations and sponsorships. That's not a foundation writing us a big check. That's neighbors, small businesses, and local shops deciding this was worth showing up for.

Despite what the naysayers say, there are enough people who care, who want to help, and who will roll up their sleeves for the long haul. I don't want to oversimplify it — this isn't easy, and there are real hurdles you have to clear along the way. But even with limited resources, we've gained a lot of ground in year one, because we bought into one idea: this is doable. You look at the person next to you, working the way you're working, contributing the way you're contributing, and you think — yeah, this can work.

And it's not just the team. There are a lot of people who come to our aid and push us forward because they want to see folks do well and the whole city move forward. We can't thank them enough. We know we've got a hill to climb. But enough small wins in a row start to look like a whirlwind.

What a Healthy Community Actually Looks Like

Here's the thing most people miss: revitalizing a distressed neighborhood is about far more than fixing buildings. Strong communities are built by strengthening people, place, and the local economy at the same time. Leave one out and it usually doesn't last. You can renovate every house on a block, but if there are no jobs and no trust between neighbors, the improvement fades. And you can run great programs, but if the housing is falling apart and the streets feel unsafe, people leave anyway.

So what does a healthy community have? When you strip it down, the ingredients are pretty consistent:

• Leadership — people willing to take ownership, from a respected local champion to residents at the decision-making table, faith and business leaders, and young leaders coming up. People build communities. Buildings don't.

• A shared vision — a clear answer to "what do we want this place to be in 5 to 10 years?" Without it, every project feels disconnected.

• Safe, healthy housing — homeownership opportunities, quality rentals, blight removal, historic rehab, and help maintaining what people already own.

• Economic opportunity — jobs, small businesses, entrepreneurship, workforce training, and financial education. People stay where opportunity is. Without income growth, the physical improvements eventually wear off.

• Education and safety — tutoring and after-school programs, trades and adult education, plus the basics of feeling safe: lighting, youth engagement, code enforcement. Nobody invests where they don't feel safe.

• Health and social capital — access to healthy food, mental health and recovery support, and the relationships that hold a place together. Festivals, cleanups, block parties, sports. Trust is community infrastructure.

• Places to gather and local businesses — community centers, parks, coffee shops, and storefronts where money circulates inside the neighborhood instead of leaving it.

  
  

• Funding, partnerships, and measurement — no single funding source is ever enough, no one organization can do this alone, and you have to track the numbers. What gets measured gets managed.

One simple way to organize all of that is around seven pillars:

Pillar	Goal
People	Leadership, education, health, youth
Place	Housing, beautification, infrastructure
Prosperity	Jobs, entrepreneurship, wealth building
Partnerships	Government, nonprofits, businesses
Programs	Services that solve real problems
Policy	Remove barriers, advocate for investment
Performance	Data, accountability, improvement

And an even simpler way to hold it in your head:

Vision + Leadership + Trust + Investment + Opportunity + Safe Housing + Education + Partnerships + Time = A Revitalized Community

Neighborhoods don't decline overnight, and they don't come back overnight either. The groups that create lasting change usually invest consistently for 10 to 20 years — lining up physical redevelopment with economic mobility and resident leadership so the gains hold up across generations.

So what can we all do? Show up. Pick one pillar you care about and put your weight behind it. Sponsor an event, mentor a kid, hire local, fix up a property, sit on a board, or just come to the table and be counted. It all adds up.

What This Looks Like for East Wheeling

We're not starting these pillars from scratch. Through the EWC Impact Studio, a lot of these pieces are already taking shape:

• Leadership — a resident-led board and community advocates who actually live and work here.

• Housing — our RESTORE program, focused on acquiring and rehabilitating homes and putting them back to work for the neighborhood.

• Economic opportunity — the BUILD accelerator for entrepreneurs, INVEST Wheeling real estate education, and workforce development, including an apprenticeship track that trains young people in the building trades on our own job sites.

• Education — financial literacy, real estate investing, business workshops, and homeownership training.

• Community engagement — the East Wheeling Heritage & Vision Forum, the Back to School Bash, and the new East Wheeling Clothing Closet.

• Partnerships — labor organizations, local government, businesses, investors, schools, and everyday community supporters.

• Sustainability — building earned revenue through property redevelopment, service programs, and strategic partnerships, so the work can keep funding itself.

The next step is pulling all of that into a single neighborhood strategy with measurable goals and a phased plan — not a pile of disconnected projects, but one direction everyone can row toward.

We're Building for the Long Haul

Community building is a marathon, and we're building for it strategically. Early wins create the trust that long-term projects require, so we start with things people can see and feel, then use that momentum to take on the bigger, multi-year work.

Quick, visible wins. We lead with high-impact, low-cost actions that show progress right away — a cleanup, an event, a day where the whole neighborhood shows up. The clearest example is our EWC Back to School Bash. This year's is the 2nd Annual, on August 23rd at Tunnel Green, 12 to 6 — and everything is free with a child present. Food, bounce houses, games and prizes, free haircuts from Moor Global Cutz, and school supplies to send kids into the year ready. It's also where our East Wheeling Clothing Closet debuts, so families can get clothing and essentials year-round, not just in August. A day like that costs relatively little and does something huge: it proves to the neighborhood that somebody is investing in them, and it earns the credibility we need for everything else.

Reinvesting in our own neighborhood. As we move forward, our goal is to reinvest right here. The 521 Project — the rehab of 521 S Penn Street — is how we start building the funding to do that. The City of Wheeling transferred that property to EWC at no acquisition cost and gave us the discretion to use it strategically, and we're treating it as the launch of RESTORE — the first of many. We're doing it in partnership with the community, the City, the county, investors, and local contractors and trades, with Brothers & Friends Contracting leading the build and PristineCrete driving the redevelopment work. We're filming the whole thing from start to finish, and the house doubles as a live classroom — a job site where our apprentices learn the trades and a real case study for our INVEST Wheeling workshops. Redeveloped right, that property becomes earned revenue we can turn around and put back into the next project, and the next block.

A standing seat at the table for residents. Quick wins get people in the door; structure keeps them there. That's what the East Wheeling Heritage & Vision Forum is for. It's a recurring, quarterly gathering built around two sessions — one on our neighborhood's heritage and oral history, and one on community visioning for the next 5 to 10 years. We run a daytime session and an evening session on the same day on purpose, because residents work different hours and raise kids and can't all show up at once. The Forum is where the people who actually live here shape the plan, keep our history in the room while we build the future, and hold collective voice when it's time to deal with the city, developers, and everyone else at the table. A neighborhood with an organized voice gets listened to. One without it gets done to.

We know we have a hill to climb. But we've also learned that a lot of small wins, strung together, start to build a whirlwind — and a whirlwind pulls people and resources toward it.

If you want to be part of that — as a resident, a business, a sponsor, an investor, a volunteer, or just a neighbor willing to roll up your sleeves — come find us. This only works because people keep showing up. And we can't thank them enough.

East Wheeling Cooperative · eastwheelingco.org