College Town
The buzzword in Morgantown these days is "development." In just about every direction around the city and its suburbs, new construction and redevelopment are changing the landscape and the way of life here.
Drive out toward Cheat Lake and you find a huge shopping center at the I-68 intersection with Pierpont Road. Called Glenmark Centre, it contains a Lowe's, a Pier One store, a supermarket, and a Whitetail Cycle store, among others. A Bob Evans restaurant packs in the crowds for brunch every Sunday morning.
Ride out to Sabraton (you can do this on your bike via the new rail-trail that curves along Decker's Creek) and you find a remodeled Sabraton Plaza featuring the ever-popular Rio Grande restaurant and a Family Dollar—today's version of the five-and-dime store. On the back side of a new building in the plaza is a Whitetail Cycle store, where you can rent bikes and skates to use on the rail-trail.
Out along Don Knotts Boulevard, in the Wharf District adjacent to downtown, two massive brick piers mark the entrance to this changing area. Rising beside the boulevard is One Waterfront Plaza, a multistory office building and conference center where many WVU offices will be relocated in the spring. Down beside the river, along the stretch of the rail-trail named after former Governor Gaston Caperton, are the La Casa restaurant—get there early on game days—and a Whitetail Cycle store.
(If you think this seems a lot of cycle stores for a city the size of Morgantown, consider that there are more than 50 miles of rail-trail either in the area now or being developed. There are other cycle and fitness stores in town, and business appears to be booming at all of them.)
From the Wharf District you can walk, run, cycle, or skate a very short distance along the rail-trail to reach the new Riverfront Amphitheater and the West Virginia Brewing Company—makers of the outstanding Appalachian Ale. In a renovated brick warehouse behind the brew pub is the new Monart Gallery, a real gallery that helps regional artists find audiences.
By no means have we reached the end of the "new stuff in Morgantown" list. WVU is constructing two new buildings on the downtown campus: an addition in front of Wise Library and a Life Sciences Building where the old Mountaineer Field used to be.
Ride out to the Evansdale campus (you can use a newly repainted gold and blue PRT car to get there) and just down the hill from the Creative Arts Center you find the new Student Recreation Center taking shape. Across the way, a cyclone fence around the Coliseum indicates the renovation going on inside. Word is that Mountaineer fans this season will enjoy a newly designed arena that will be among the best-looking in college basketball.
I'll stop here, with apologies to anyone whose project I've omitted—and I haven't touched at all on High Street or the new residential developments springing up on hillsides and in meadows all around the area. I just wanted to let you know that Morgantown and your alma mater are taking on a new look. Time has not stood still in West Virginia's college town.
—T. S. C.
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