THOMAS, W.Va. — A long-planned $4.3 million development will bring new workforce housing and commercial space to downtown Thomas, where the growth of the small Allegheny Mountains tourism community has increased the need for places for local workers to live.
Woodlands Development & Lending will break ground Sept. 4 on the TAProom project at 242 Spruce Street near the Mountain Top Senior Center. Plans call for 10 workforce-housing apartments, plus ground-floor commercial and coworking space, with the groundbreaking ceremony scheduled for noon.
Thomas City Council approved a construction permit in April 2025 for two four-story buildings, with housing on the upper three floors and commercial uses at street level. City Council records show parking is planned along Birch Alley.
The project represents a potentially significant addition to Thomas’s housing stock, a former coal and railroad town that has emerged as one of West Virginia’s best-known small tourism communities. The city had 623 residents at the 2020 census, while its revived downtown now supports a concentration of galleries, restaurants, shops, music venues and other businesses serving residents and visitors.
Workforce housing is a growing need in Tucker County
Finding housing for the people who work in the growing tourism economy has become a recurring development concern in Tucker County. County planning documents have identified workforce housing as a priority, while the neighboring Town of Davis has similarly concluded that additional workforce housing is essential for working residents, particularly those employed in relatively modest-paying service-sector jobs.
Thomas is now seeing more than one attempt to address that need. Blackwater Ridge has also been developing the Rapids Apartments near Thomas, a separate 20-unit project consisting of 14 one-bedroom and six two-bedroom apartments. A portion of those units is intended for households earning 80 percent or less of the area median income.
Together, the two developments could add 30 apartments in and around a city of fewer than 700 residents, although the projects are separate and have different developers and financing.
TAProom project dates to 2012
The TAProom project has an unusually long history. Woodlands purchased the property in 2012 with support from New Historic Thomas and the Tucker County Development Authority and demolished the deteriorated building historically known as the TAPRoom.
Stakeholder meetings that followed helped produce the concept for a mixed-use development combining apartments with flexible workspace for the area’s remote workers, entrepreneurs and freelancers.
Public records show that the proposal continued to evolve. A 2023 request for architectural and engineering qualifications described a three-story mixed-use building containing 10 housing units and a first-floor collaborative workspace. The construction permit subsequently approved by Thomas officials describes two four-story buildings while retaining the project’s combination of housing and commercial uses.
Public funding helps move project forward
The development has also assembled funding from a wide range of public, nonprofit, and private sources. In 2022, the project received $622,000 in congressionally directed spending for what was then described as the Thomas Multi-Use Co-Working and Small Business Center.
A later West Virginia Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization award provided $727,000 for the “Tap Room Coworking Synergy Center & Apartments,” which state officials described as including a coworking and small-business center and 10 workforce-housing units.
Woodlands said additional support for the current $4.3 million project comes from the Tucker County Development Authority, the West Virginia Affordable Housing Fund, the West Virginia Housing Development Fund, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s office, Fahe, West Virginia Brownfields programs, conventional loans, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Omar Hakeem of TBD Studio is serving as the project’s architect. Woodlands Development & Lending, based in Elkins, develops affordable housing and downtown redevelopment projects and provides financing and assistance to small businesses in Randolph, Barbour and Tucker counties.
Construction will formally begin with the Sept. 4 groundbreaking on Spruce Street, marking the next step for a downtown property Woodlands first acquired for redevelopment in 2012.