Business View Magazine | September 2022

246 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 9 fly from the airport, it makes for a significant amount of their traffic. “So, yes, the work we are currently doing is about improving what we already have,” Russell notes. “While we prepare and work on these new opportunities with education, we are maintaining and improving the infrastructure. There are the two runway projects, but we are also doing some roofing and new windows at the terminal and control tower – some of this was made possible because we just received an infrastructure grant from the FAA.” Russell credits a lot of the growth in the area to the work of the Wheeling-Ohio County Visitors and Convention Bureau. They are very energetic in terms of working to bring visitors to the area, as well as collaboration with all the various entities. “I still think one of the biggest draws for tourism is the new Highland Sports Complex that we opened up a couple of years ago,” Russell says. “It has a full-size indoor football field and an outdoor football field that also can be used for lacrosse and soccer. Then there are six basketball courts. We have a café, a rock- climbing wall, and an arcade and we’ve been very successful up to this point, bringing in some large events, some basketball, wrestling, and we want to do more of that. We also have several well-known golf courses such as Speidel, Fairway River Links, and others. And we have Wheeling Island, which is a racetrack and gaming resort downtown on the river. The other piece of it is we are very lucky because we have a very large municipal park in Ohio County – Oglebay Park.” The park covers 1650 acres and is the only self-supporting public municipal park of its kind. In 1926, Earl W. Oglebay deeded his estate, Waddington Farms, to the City of Wheeling for the express purpose of public recreation. The park has been open to the public since 1928