Wheeling Enters the HOPE VI Era
On August 31, 1999, the front page of the Wheeling News-Register carried the kind of headline that sounds, at first, like a city catching its breath:
“Wheeling to Get $20.25 Million.”
For Wheeling, this was not just another federal grant announcement. It was the opening bell of a new housing era.
The city had been awarded more than $20 million in grants and loans from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The largest piece was a $17,124,000 HOPE VI grant, part of a federal program designed to demolish and rebuild some of the nation’s most distressed public housing. The rest came through related economic development tools, including a $1 million Brownfields Economic Development Initiative grant and a $2.25 million Section 108 loan.
The newspaper made clear that this was front-page news because it was not merely about housing. It was about what Wheeling believed it could become.
It was also the beginning of a complicated story.
The National Program Comes To Wheeling
By 1999, HOPE VI had already become one of the most consequential federal housing programs in the country. Born from the national concern over severely distressed public housing, HOPE VI promised to move beyond the old model of isolated, concentrated public housing complexes. Its language was bold: demolition, revitalization, mixed-income neighborhoods, opportunity, self-sufficiency, and renewal.
HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo framed the program in almost moral terms. He said HUD was “transforming public housing projects with problems into new mixed-income communities with promise.” Public housing, he argued, should become “a launching pad to opportunity, jobs and self-sufficiency” rather than “a warehouse trapping people in poverty and long-term dependence.”
That national language now had a Wheeling address.
Grandview Manor and Lincoln Homes were named directly in the local plan. The city’s HOPE VI proposal would allow both to be demolished and replaced with what officials described as improved housing opportunities at Grandview and elsewhere in East Wheeling and North Wheeling.
For readers of our Foundation’s housing series, those names matter.
Grandview Manor and Lincoln Homes were not abstractions. They were part of the long arc of Wheeling’s public housing story, connected to the city’s earlier struggles with overcrowding, substandard housing, racial segregation, urban renewal, and the persistent question of who gets to live with dignity in a changing city.
Before Wheeling received the award, local officials were already making the case for HOPE VI in public. In July 1999, Ed Summers, deputy director and contract administrator for the Wheeling Housing Authority, spoke to the Wheeling Rotary Club about the program and what it could mean for the city. At that point, the grant had not yet been awarded. The “missing link,” Summers explained, was the HOPE VI funding itself: approximately $19.3 million being sought as part of a larger project estimated at nearly $48 million.
The target areas were already clear: East Wheeling and North Wheeling, especially Grandview Manor and Lincoln Homes. If the grant came through, those complexes would be demolished and replaced. Summers described the existing condition as distressed housing and emphasized that the city would need a relocation plan because “we cannot leave someone homeless.” He also used unusually direct language about the old design, saying the plan would “break down the glass wall” around an economically isolated enclave. Concentrating large numbers of low-income residents in one isolated area, he said, was both a design failure and “a form of segregation.”
That July article matters because it shows that, even before the celebration, Wheeling’s HOPE VI story was being framed as more than construction. It was being framed as an attempt to undo isolation.
The Language Of A Jackpot
The next morning, The Intelligencer captured the mood with a headline that almost shouted from the front page: “Wheeling Hits The Jackpot.”
That language matters. It shows how city leaders, federal officials, and the local press initially framed HOPE VI not only as a housing program, but as a civic windfall. Wheeling had become the first community in West Virginia to receive a HOPE VI grant, and the award came bundled with Brownfields funding and a Section 108 loan aimed at Center Wheeling and the proposed Celoron Plaza redevelopment.
In the public telling, this was not simply about replacing distressed public housing. It was about momentum, money, reinvestment, and the possibility that long-neglected parts of the city might finally be pulled into a new economic future.
A companion article pushed that idea even further, describing the city as “prospecting” from a “gold mine.” Pittsburgh Mayor Tom Murphy had reportedly told Wheeling officials that the abandoned warehouse district near the riverfront was a kind of untapped treasure. That is the part of the HOPE VI story that deserves careful reading.
To city government, developers, and planners, the program opened doors: federal dollars, land acquisition, demolition, environmental cleanup, parking revenue, and public-private redevelopment. But to the families living in Grandview Manor, Lincoln Homes, and the neighborhoods surrounding them, the “jackpot” was more complicated.
The same announcement that sounded like opportunity from City Hall also meant demolition, relocation, waiting lists, promises of return, and a new question that would follow the project for years: who exactly gets to share in the gold rush?
A Gift And A Challenge
Just ten days after the front-page announcement, Mayor Jack Lipphardt offered his own public framing of HOPE VI in an opinion piece titled “Revitalizing Wheeling: A Gift and a Challenge.”
The title alone is useful.
It captured the dual mood of the moment: gratitude for a rare federal investment, but also the recognition that money by itself would not solve Wheeling’s deeper housing, poverty, land-use, and redevelopment problems. Lipphardt described years of pushing the Wheeling Housing Authority, City Council, and city administration to think “outside the box” about housing assistance, while also reclaiming deteriorated and contaminated industrial and commercial properties for productive use.
His column also shows how tightly Wheeling’s HOPE VI story was tied to a larger redevelopment vision. The mayor praised the Housing Authority’s “solid, visionary plan” to demolish older public housing projects and replace them with mixed-income dwellings in neighborhood settings, connected to self-sufficiency programs for residents. In the same breath, he connected HOPE VI to Celoron Plaza, brownfields cleanup, the Wheeling Stamping Building, parking facilities, land banking, and new investment.
For City Hall, HOPE VI was not only a housing grant. It was a chance to reorganize how Wheeling thought about public housing, economic development, abandoned land, and the future of Center Wheeling.
But Lipphardt’s opinion piece also carried a warning. Even as Wheeling celebrated the grant, he argued that proposed federal HUD cuts could weaken the very programs cities depended on to provide affordable housing, jobs, and economic opportunity.
He urged West Virginia’s congressional delegation to protect HUD funding, writing in moral language about the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled, and those in need of decent affordable housing.
That matters for our Foundation’s telling of the story.
The same project that could be described as a “jackpot” also rested on a fragile federal system, political advocacy, and a public promise that revitalization would not leave the most vulnerable residents behind.
A “Dream Come True” Moment
Mayor Jack Lipphardt called the award “a dream come true.”
“For years,” he said, he had encouraged the Wheeling Housing Authority “to develop a better way to provide housing and residential assistance.” He credited new appointments to the authority and new executive leadership with changing the agency’s philosophy.
The mayor’s language is important because it tells us how city leadership wanted the public to understand this moment. This was not being presented simply as the replacement of buildings. It was being framed as a philosophical turn: away from dense public housing complexes and toward a different model of housing support.
Lipphardt said he had asked the Wheeling Housing Authority to “thin out” the densely constructed Grandview Manor complex by at least 50 percent. But the HOPE VI plan went further. It would allow the entire Grandview structure, along with Lincoln Homes, to be demolished.
In the mayor’s telling, this was not loss. It was rebirth.
“HOPE VI replaces it,” he said, “with beautiful housing opportunities at Grandview as well as elsewhere in East Wheeling and North Wheeling.”
That sentence is both hopeful and heavy. It carries the promise of better housing. It also carries the question that follows every redevelopment plan: better for whom, where, and under what terms?
The First HOPE VI Grant In West Virginia
The 1999 announcement was historically significant for another reason. According to the article, Wheeling’s award was the first HOPE VI grant in West Virginia.
That alone made the city a kind of test case.
The grant was highly competitive. The newspaper reported that HUD was awarding $571 million to 21 housing authorities across the country. Wheeling was one of them. Mayor Lipphardt said that out of 80 cities competing for the money, Wheeling ranked 13th and scored 93 out of 100 points on HUD’s ranking system.
“I am so proud of Wheeling,” he said.
There is something striking about that moment. A city often described through decline, loss, outmigration, and aging infrastructure suddenly found itself being praised inside a major national housing program. Federal officials, congressional leaders, city government, the housing authority, private lenders, and social service partners were all gathered around the same promise: Wheeling could rebuild.
More Than Housing: The Center Wheeling Connection
One of the most revealing parts of the article is that Wheeling’s HOPE VI award was tied to broader economic development.
The $1 million Brownfields Economic Development Initiative grant was intended to help with hazardous materials remediation, demolition, clearance of dilapidated buildings, and parking facilities at Celoron Plaza in Center Wheeling. The $2.25 million Section 108 loan was connected to acquiring vacant properties and rehabilitating the former Wheeling Stamp Building. The plan was to correct building code violations and prepare the four-story building for office use, with repayment coming from parking revenues at Celoron Plaza.
This is where the story widens.
Wheeling’s HOPE VI moment was not only about replacing public housing. It was linked to downtown redevelopment, brownfields cleanup, vacant property reuse, parking, office space, and the city’s broader attempt to reverse disinvestment.
City Manager Will Turani called the funding “tremendous” and said it made the Celoron Plaza project “a reality.” With City Council’s commitment of funds in Center Wheeling, he said, HUD’s partnership helped move the project forward “dramatically.”
This is important for the Foundation’s readers because it shows how public housing policy was never isolated from the rest of the city’s ambitions. The future of low-income residents was tied to the future of downtown redevelopment. Housing, land, demolition, jobs, parking, and business development were braided together.
That braid is where the story gets complicated.
The Language Of Partnership
Wheeling Housing Authority Executive Director Lisa Zukoff described the HOPE VI plan as “the culmination of over two years of planning and partnering” with public housing residents, city administration, City Council, area social service providers, private lending institutions, and concerned community groups.
Her statement matters because HOPE VI depended on partnership. The federal grant alone was not the whole project. The newspaper reported that the $17.124 million HOPE VI grant would be matched by nearly $30 million from partners in economic development, including the city of Wheeling, the state of West Virginia, private lenders, in-kind social services, and the Federal Home Loan Bank’s Affordable Housing Program.
In other words, HOPE VI was not simply a check from Washington. It was a local coalition.
That is one of the reasons these stories are so important to preserve. When we look back years later, it can be tempting to reduce major redevelopment projects to a single agency or a single decision. But the 1999 article shows a web of actors: HUD, the city, the Housing Authority, congressional offices, lenders, social service providers, public housing residents, and neighborhood stakeholders.
Every one of those groups carried different hopes into the room.
Some saw housing reform. Some saw economic development. Some saw neighborhood renewal. Some saw opportunity. Some likely feared displacement, uncertainty, or the erasure of a familiar community.
All of those truths can exist at the same time.
Grandview, Lincoln Homes, And The Weight Of Place
For the Eugene and Beverly Stradwick Heritage Foundation, this story lands inside a larger local history.
By 1999, Wheeling’s Black residents and low-income families had already lived through generations of housing inequality: overcrowded neighborhoods, segregated opportunity, urban renewal, public housing construction, neglect, promises of improvement, and the long struggle for decent homes in a city divided by race, class, and geography.
Grandview Manor and Lincoln Homes were not just units on a spreadsheet. They were places where families lived, children grew up, elders watched neighborhoods change, and public policy became daily life.
The decision to demolish and replace them must be understood in that human context.
HOPE VI’s national language was full of aspiration: opportunity, self-sufficiency, revitalization, mixed-income communities. But in every city where HOPE VI arrived, including Wheeling, those words had to pass through real streets, real families, real memories, and real fears.
That is why this 1999 front-page article deserves close attention. It captured the public optimism at the starting line, before the years of implementation, relocation, rebuilding, criticism, adjustment, and consequence that would follow.
The Political Weight Behind The Announcement
The article also shows the political importance of the award.
The announcement came through a telephone conference involving HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Jack Lipphardt, Sen. Robert C. Byrd, Rep. Alan Mollohan, and others. Rev. Joseph Pacala, identified as a special assistant to Cuomo, was also noted as being in Wheeling for the announcement.
Cuomo reportedly called the award “an extraordinary accomplishment in West Virginia,” especially because Wheeling had received both the HOPE VI grant and economic development funds.
That combination mattered. It suggested that Wheeling was being positioned not only as a housing redevelopment site, but as a city trying to connect housing transformation with broader economic renewal.
Sen. Byrd tied the project to the Wheeling heritage initiative and said Wheeling had shown that “the plight of downtown decay can be overcome.”
That line is worth pausing over.
In the public language of 1999, HOPE VI was not only about distressed housing. It was about decay and renewal. It was about how a city imagined itself, how it wanted to be seen, and how it hoped to rewrite the story of decline.
The October 1999 coverage shows what happened once the award became real: the promise moved into neighborhood politics. North Wheeling residents had questions and concerns about the HOPE VI plan, especially the proposal to bring new housing to the old Wheeling Hospital property.
A meeting hosted by the Wheeling Housing Authority drew about 50 residents. Lisa Zukoff acknowledged that there were “vocal dissenters” and described some of the reaction as a “Not In My Back Yard” response, while also noting that many people did not yet fully understand the program. City Councilman Larry “Babe” Schmitt said some residents initially feared that the “criminal element of Grandview Manor” would simply be pushed into North Wheeling, but he argued that the plan represented a different concept built around homeownership and responsibility.
The article also gave important details about the larger design: only about half of the existing 325 units atop Wheeling Hill would be replaced, with a mix of public assistance units, lease-to-own properties, market-rate homes, and Section 8 vouchers for remaining residents.
The proposed North Wheeling design was meant to echo the existing neighborhood, with Italianate and Classical styles, rowhouses, and townhouses. This is the moment where the HOPE VI story becomes more human and more complicated. The city had won the money, but now it had to win trust.
The Question Beneath The Celebration
The Foundation’s work is not to dismiss hope. Hope matters. Better housing matters. Federal investment matters. The possibility of replacing distressed housing with safer, healthier homes was and remains deeply important.
But our work is also to ask historical questions.
When Wheeling entered the HOPE VI era, what did residents themselves understand the promise to be?
Who was relocated, and where did they go?
How many units were lost, replaced, or transformed?
Did families return?
Did the new model reduce poverty, or simply move it?
Did redevelopment strengthen East Wheeling and North Wheeling, or did it change the relationship between residents and place?
How did the HOPE VI project affect Black families, low-income families, elders, children, and people whose lives were already shaped by decades of uneven housing policy?
Those questions do not spoil the celebration. They complete it.
A serious history must hold both the promise and the consequences.
Why This Story Belongs In Our Archive
The August 31, 1999 article is a powerful starting point because it preserves the official optimism of the moment. It shows the city at the threshold of a major decision, full of confidence that federal housing policy could help remake Wheeling.
For the Foundation, that matters because housing is never just housing.
Housing determines school access, neighborhood identity, family stability, health, wealth, safety, memory, and belonging. In Wheeling, the history of African American life cannot be told without telling the history of where people were allowed to live, where they were pushed, where they built community, and where the city later decided renewal should happen.
HOPE VI was one of those turning points.
The 1999 announcement gave Wheeling money, attention, and a plan. It also opened a new chapter in the long story of public housing, redevelopment, and community memory.
This blog series will follow that chapter carefully.
We will begin with the promise. Then we will follow the paper trail.
-T
Historical Terminology Note
This article includes historical terms such as “colored” and “Negro” when quoting original sources or identifying organizations as they were known at the time. These terms reflect the language and racial conditions of their era; their inclusion is not an endorsement of their use today.
In our own narrative, we use Black and African American, as appropriate. We preserve historical wording to document the past faithfully while honoring the dignity, humanity, and experiences of the people whose stories we share.
Source Notes
Wheeling News-Register, “Wheeling to Get $20.25 Million,” August 31, 1999, front page.
Wheeling News-Register, continuation of “HUD,” August 31, 1999, p. 6.
Wheeling News-Register, “Rotary Club Gets Lesson on Hope VI,” July 14, 1999, p. 7.
The Intelligencer, “North Wheeling Residents Have Concerns About HOPE VI Housing,” October 2, 1999, p. 9.
The Intelligencer, “Wheeling Hits The Jackpot,” September 1, 1999, p. 1; The Intelligencer, “City Prospecting From ‘Gold Mine,’” September 1, 1999, pp. 1, 3.
The Intelligencer, “Revitalizing Wheeling: A Gift and a Challenge,” guest column by Mayor Jack Lipphardt, September 11, 1999, p. 4
Prior Foundation research and blog drafting on HOPE VI’s national history, including the program’s emergence as a federal response to severely distressed public housing, its mixed-income redevelopment model, and the broader debates over demolition, replacement housing, displacement, and community impact.
