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5J Sunday Gazette-Mail, February 28, 2016 By Elaina Sauber Staff writer Construction is under way to double the square footage at the University of Charleston’s Eddie King Gym. By this fall, the new, 70,000 square-foot facility will be home to the Russell and Mar- tha Wehrle Innovation Center. University officials opened construction on the project last summer that will fund major renovations on the gym, which was built in 1947 and named after Morris Harvey College’s athletic director from 1947-57, Eddie King. Its cost exceeds $14 million. The new facility will boast an intercollegiate athletic facility for basketball and volleyball, as well as space and resources to help bolster innovation and entrepreneurship among UC students and faculty, Director of Communications David Traube said. “We’re taking the Eddie King Gym and reimagining it, and building the rest from scratch,” Traube said. When the university hosts an open house of the new facility during Homecoming Weekend from Oct. 7 to 9, it “won’t even resemble” the old facility. A video on the university’s website details those dramatic changes. Green space will sur- round the facility, and the cir- cular entrance to the center will be above the canopy posi- tioned over the existing gym doors. The basketball court will be repositioned to run north to south instead of its current east to west layout. In addition to the court, con- cessions and locker rooms, the athletics section of the facility will also feature the UC Athlet- ic Hall of Fame; offices for the athletic director and coaches; video rooms for teams to re- view game tapes; and a confer- ence room on the third floor where coaches can meet with recruits and their families. A new walking track is also being built, which will be open to the public, Traube said. But the innovation side of the facility will offer additional resources to students, such as a classroom with fully mobile furnishings on the second floor, as well as areas with comput- ers and other equipment for students to work collaborative- ly on projects and ideas. New technology will include hard wired and wireless data throughout the center, moni- tors, projectors, video boards and sound systems, Traube said. He noted there’s been an increased need at UC for work spaces that cater to entrepre- neurs. The university is also in the process of hiring a vice presi- dent who would manage the innovation center and “lead a team of scholars on different things,” Traube said. “We’re building this really cool gym, but we also want to have a great educational com- ponent to it,” Traube said. The university will host an open house during homecom- ing weekend from Oct. 7 to 9 for students and alumni to tour the finished product. “We think a lot of people will be in town [who] have a vested interest in it — it gives us an opportunity to host some events,” Traube said. The facility will be named after Russell and Martha Weh- rle, two longtime UC Board of Trustees members whose foun- dation made a $5 million dona- tion toward the building’s ren- ovation in 2014. Martha Wehr- le was a state legislator for more than two decades. Pickering Associates and ZDS handled the design work on the project, while BBL is the general contractor with several local subcontractors, Traube said. Reach Elaina Sauber at [email protected], 304-348-3051 or follow @ElainaSauber on Twitter. Work continues on UC gym renovations, innovation center Photo courtesy University of Charleston Work has continued throughout the winter on the Russell and Martha Wehrle Innovation Center. The new facility, which will include a new gym for the University of Charleston’s basketball and volleyball teams, is expected to be ready by this fall. A artist’s rendering depicts what the finished Russell and Martha Wehrle Innovation Center will look like. By Daniel Desrochers Staff writer In order to get to the man who was in a diabetic coma, emergen- cy personnel had to park at his neighbor’s house and hike to his property. It took them three hours, all because he didn’t have a bridge emergency services could drive across. According to West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster, by the end of July last year, there were more than 300 homes without a bridge to provide vehicle access across a creek, leaving them without ac- cess to their homes. Now WV VOAD is trying to solve that problem by building bridges across Southern West Virginia. “We wanted to help these families because we were their only hope,” said Jenny Gan- naway, state director of WV VOAD. The project, which centers around Lincoln, Mingo, Boone, Logan and Wayne counties, has resulted in six bridges so far, with around 188 more to go. Volunteer organizations take charge of the bridges, which sometimes cost as much as $20,000. “If you’re living on a fixed income, or you’re unemployed, you can’t afford to build a bridge like that,” Gannaway said. Before, many of these people built their own culverts to get across the water. But when the flood waters rose, those culverts came apart, sometimes stopping the creek and flooding houses nearby. WV VOAD goes in and make new bridges using concrete piers on both ends of the creek bank. They use steel beams to stabilize the bridges and put wood on top. “If bridges are built properly and safe, we’re not going to have the problem with flooding that we have in the past,” Gannaway said. So far, all of the bridges have been built by the Mennonite Disaster Service, but the Church of the Brethren and American Baptist plan on helping out as well. WV VOAD accepts checks from people who want to adopt a bridge. Most of the bridges cost $16,000, but WV VOAD takes any amount. The people who are waiting on bridges could use them. Some people just drive through the water, which could be a problem once flood season starts. Some park a mile away and use a footbridge to cross the creek and get to their property. Others park at their neighbor’s house and walk the distance needed. “People are really hurting,” Gannaway said. “And you don’t really think about how much a bridge means to you.” Reach Daniel Desrochers at [email protected], 304-348-4886 or follow @drdesrochers on Twitter. Volunteer group helps W.Va. residents by building bridges Photos courtesy WV VOAD Volunteers with West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Di- saster help build a bridge last year. Volunteers with West Virginia Voluntary Organizations Active in Di- saster help build a bridge last year. By Steve Brown The Dallas Morning News LAS VEGAS — The U.S. housing industry is being pulled in two directions. Baby boomers with big housing bucks to spend still rank at the top of many builders’ customer lists. But rising sales to millions of millennials have sent builders scrambling to tailor houses for the next genera- tion of buyers. “Millennials are really coming into the market in significant numbers,” Dan DiClerico of Consumer Re- ports told homebuilders from around the nation meeting last month in Las Vegas. “Millennials have become the top homebuying demograph- ic in the country. “That’s despite the fact many of them are saddled with enormous student debt and soaring apartment rents.” DiClerico told builders at the National Association of Home Builders’ annual con- ference that millennial buyers now account for 36 percent of U.S. home purchases, compared with 34 percent of homes going to baby boom- ers. While younger Americans say they have a preference for urban neighborhoods, 44 percent of them are buying in the ‘burbs, according to new surveys. “It was a landslide in favor of the suburbs,” DiClerico said. “I was a little surprised by this.” The latest buyer surveys show that millennials desire bigger houses with more bedrooms than expected by previous first-time buyers. Cater to boomers or millennials? Homebuilders caught in between “We thought they would come into the market and de- mand smaller homes — they did not,” said Rose Quint, a researcher with the National Association of Home Builders. Mitch Levinson, with Atlan- ta-based housing consultant mRelevance, said millennials are starting to drive the U.S. housing market in many ways. “The stereotypes you have about millennials are actually not true,” Levinson said. “Now they have jobs — they have good jobs and high-paying jobs. “They have a larger nest egg than most of the other genera- tions had at their age,” he said. “They want to live in the city, but many of them can’t so they live in the suburbs.” He said they are more de- manding than previous home- buying generations. “They are just waiting a little longer to get the American dream because they are not willing to settle for what their parents settled for in a first house,” Levinson said. But don’t count those boomer buyers out of the housing mar- ket just yet. There are 76 million baby boomers in the U.S., and in the next 15 years there will be twice as many Americans over 65. “Every day over 10,000 boomers turn 65,” said AARP’s Aldea Douglas, adding that boomers are responsible for at least $7.1 trillion in economic activity. “Boomers, I’m here to tell you, are the ones you need to build your homes around.” Getting those boomers to spend bucks for new houses isn’t always easy. “Seventy-eight percent of 45- plus people say they want to stay in their current residences,” Douglas said. “Eighty percent say they want to stay in the same community.” The homebuilders association tracks age 55-plus buyers to anticipate their needs as they approach and enter retirement. “In every state, at least one- third of the households are 55 or older,” said Paul Emrath of the builders association. “This market is growing not just in terms of numbers, but as a share of the U.S. population.” Emrath said 70 percent of boomers want to live in subur- ban neighborhoods. 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