Buckets and tubs are in place in the Capitol Theatre’s upstairs ballroom, where a leaky roof has forced officials to move today’s State of the City address to Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack.
WHEELING, W.Va. — With temperatures expected to remain below freezing throughout the week, it may be several days before workers can fix the Capitol Theatre’s leaky roof.
The ice atop the historic downtown Wheeling building is three to four inches thick in some places, according to Greater Wheeling Sports and Entertainment Authority Executive Director Dennis Magruder, making repairs more challenging than usual.
“It’s been a tough weekend. … We’ve got to get roofers up there to find out what’s going on, but you can’t get to it,” he said.
The leak, which is directly over the theater’s ballroom, forced a last-minute change in plans for today’s State of the City address, which Mayor Andy McKenzie will now deliver from the showroom at Wheeling Island Hotel-Casino-Racetrack.
In addition to the leaky roof, theater officials also had to deal with a water pipe that burst over the weekend. Although Magruder said that issue has been corrected, workers had to shut down the building’s sprinkler system temporarily.
“We had to man the building pretty much all weekend for fire watch,” he said.
Fortunately for the theater, Magruder said the burst pipe was in a seldom-used room in the theater’s subbasement and caused minimal damage. He doesn’t anticipate the building issues will impact any events at the theater except for the mayor’s address.
For the time being, several buckets and plastic tubs are being used to catch the water dripping into the ballroom.
“We’ll maintain it until we can figure out how to actually get it fixed,” Magruder said.
It’s too soon to tell how much the weekend’s problems will cost the theater, which has already seen about $1.5 million worth of interior and exterior renovations over the last two years.
Magruder also expressed his appreciation to fans – many of them from as far as two hours away – who braved Saturday’s heavy snowfall to attend “Monster Jam” over the weekend at WesBanco Arena, which also operates under the Greater Wheeling Sports and Entertainment Authority.
“The weather has wreaked its havoc on everybody in the community. … I’m sure there’s probably a few who didn’t come because of it, but we were pretty happy,” he said.
Doors will open for today’s State of the City address at 11:30 a.m., with lunch served at approximately 11:45 followed by McKenzie’s speech at noon. About 220 people have made reservations for the event, according to city Marketing and Community Relations Specialist Allison Skibo.
Moving the speech to the casino made sense, Skibo said, as Wheeling Island is catering the luncheon.
“It will be different, but we don’t imagine it will reduce the quality in any way,” she said.
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