Published: August 24, 2008 08:55 pm      

Beauty to flow into heart of Welch

WELCH — After a one-two punch combination of devastating floods in 2001 and ‘02, the city of Welch appeared to be on the proverbial ropes, but just like the fighter the city has always been, there’s no sign of surrender, no white flags waving and no giving up.

On the day after Labor Day, construction will begin on a new downtown park complex complete with scenic river walks and a stage for outdoor performances. “The water has been our enemy all these years,” Welch Mayor Martha Moore said. “We’re going to turn that around and make the water our friend.”

Welch was established in 1894 at the confluence of Elkhorn Creek and the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River — a pair of waterways that are cradled in valleys surrounded by steep mountain slopes with a long history of severe flash floods dating back as far as the early years of the 20th Century. Despite the area’s propensity for flooding, Welch grew into McDowell County’s largest city and became the seat of county government. However, a prolonged economic slump forced many businesses to pull out of town, and the time that the most recent floods hit, some McDowell Street buildings were already empty.

After the flood waters subsided, the Federal Emergency Management Agency came in and demolished some of the big buildings in the heart of the Welch business district that were deemed unsalvageable. In an entirely separate development, some major construction projects in Welch as well as other new businesses started bringing some much-needed business and occupation tax revenue into the city, allowing council to launch an ambitious city-wide demolition project to remove 94 dilapidated houses from the city, and fund a park to beautify a large site in the heart of town that opened up when three buildings on the Tug Fork side of McDowell Street were razed.

“We’re able to do this project because we have some available funds, and we have the space available,” Moore said. “FEMA removed the three buildings — one was the old Dollar Store — but all had been vacant since the flood. City council has been working since January on the project and recently awarded the design contract to Triad Engineering from St. Albans to develop the riverside park project. Council worked directly with Joseph Young of Triad on the design. Council brought Mcclananhan Construction Company of Poca on board to build the park with construction slated to start next week.

Moore said that the estimated price tag for the park is between $1.2 and $1.5 million, with completion estimated in about 10 months. “Who knows? If the good weather we’ve had lately holds out, the project may be done sooner than that,” Moore said.

The riverside park is just one aspect of several recent developments in the city that has Moore and the city council feeling pretty good. The city acquired an old furniture warehouse on the corner of McDowell and Wyoming streets that is slowly being transformed into a coal museum. Council commissioned well-known local outdoor artist, Tom Acosta, who is painting a 1920s-vintage downtown Welch street scene on the warehouse wall nearest the intersection, and the Marquee Cinemas that opened May 4, 2005, continues to draw people into the city.

But perhaps the most interesting new business in town is DB’s X-clusive Restaurant and Lounge, located in the former Moose Lodge building on Wyoming Street. The classy restaurant that Moore said some local diners have compared to the Char Restaurant in Beckley, has been treating visitors from as far away as Durham, N.C., Richmond, Va., and even California since opening on June 18.

“It’s been going really well,” DB’s manager Jennifer Alger said. “We’re learning more all the time, and each day, we get better at what we do. We have a dress code — business casual — but that doesn’t seem to scare people off. But it’s our food that keeps people coming back. Our chef, Richard Streeter, has some special dishes that he makes that ... Well. You just have to try them to find out how good they are.”

Streeter started cooking at age 16 as a young man in Syracuse, N.Y., and left New York for Florida the following year. He served for five years as Sous Chef at the prestigious Pelican Yacht Club in Ft. Pierce, Fla., and took his first executive chef position at the Tournament Players Club at Monte Carlo, in Ft. Pierce. He held other executive chef positions at the Chesterfield Hotel Delux in Palm Beach, Fla., and the Legacy Golf and Tennis Club, PGA National in Port St. Luce, Fla. He was in Atlanta, Ga., on sabbatical when he “unexpectedly ended up in Welch,” he said.

Alger said she has other great plans for the restaurant that features a dance floor, large area for restaurant seating, small private dining rooms and a huge marble-top bar. Alger said she plans to transform the second floor of the building into two large meeting rooms. The restaurant opens for lunch from 11 a.m., to 2 p.m., and for dinner from 5 p.m., to 8:30 p.m., daily from Monday through Saturday.

“The sirloin keeps bringing me back Moore said. “I think Butch and I are their best customers,” she added, alluding to her husband, Butch Moore.

“Hopefully, new people will see what we’re doing here and want to take part in it,” Moore said. “We see all of this as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to really make a difference here. This is not the work of one person. Our entire council has given its unanimous support of these projects that will help our city.”

As she walked along McDowell Street, she paused to place plastic warning cones over exposed bolts where a street light was about to be mounted. A short distance further, she stooped down and picked up a candy wrapper someone had thrown in the street. She didn’t have to say: “I love my city.” She demonstrated it in every thing she did.

– Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com