$100 million plan would revitalize Wilmington neighborhood

Riverside, a poverty-stricken neighborhood in northeast Wilmington, may soon be transformed.

Over the next decade, a major redevelopment will include mixed-income housing in place of the current public housing units, an expansion of EastSide Charter School, and health services at Kingswood Community Center.

The plans are part of Riverside’s selection as a “Purpose Built Community,” one of 19 in the country where a nonprofit provides free consulting on alleviating concentrated poverty through improvements to housing, early childhood-through-high school education and health. 

“We want everybody that comes into the community to understand that this is a vibrant healthy community, that anyone born here is not going to be held back by their zip code,” said Logan Herring, executive director of Kingswood Community Center.

The revitalization will be funded locally. Gov. John Carney announced the state is contributing $1 million to the effort. Mayor Mike Purzycki said the city plans to pay a similar amount, though the sum has yet to be finalized with City Council.

The rest will be financed through low income housing tax credits, donations and grants, Purzycki said. 

He anticipates $100 million will be invested in Riverside during the course of the project.

“That’s a massive infusion of investment into this side of town,” he said.

What is Purpose Built Communities?

Purpose Built Communities, the consulting nonprofit, was founded nearly a decade ago to replicate revitalization strategies used in the neighborhood of East Lake in Atlanta, Georgia, where crime and poverty were high.

Backed by deep-pocketed donors such as Warren Buffet, the organization has helped start similar plans in cities like Houston and Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

Wilmington became the latest site Tuesday, when the organization’s president and local project leaders signed an agreement at a packed news conference at Kingswood.

Purzycki and Charles McDowell, CEO of EastSide Charter School's foundation, became interested in the partnership in 2014, two years before Purzycki was elected mayor.

They visited East Lake, where crime is down and educational performance has “rocketed,” Purzycki said. 

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The project requires the creation of a new nonprofit, Reach Riverside, of which Herring will be CEO and McDowell its board chair. Other board members include Delaware State University provost Tony Allen and Rob Buccini, co-president of the city's largest developer.

“This isn’t just a housing project,” Purzycki said. “Its strength is the building of a community, not just bricks and mortar.”

What does Riverside get?

Officials have long wanted to redevelop Riverside, a low-income neighborhood bordered by the Brandywine River, railroad tracks and a state prison.

Officials Tuesday touted the success of Wilmington’s own Village of Eastlake, a public housing project nicknamed “the Bucket” that was a hub of drug dealing and other crimes.

It was torn down in the early 2000s and replaced with a mix of public housing and privately owned homes. 

The Wilmington Housing Authority hoped to do the same to its units in Riverside, the News Journal reported in 2011. But a federal grant from the Housing and Urban Development agency was not awarded. 

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Now, those plans get another chance. 

Kingswood will allow its 12 acres of land to be joined with the Wilmington Housing Authority’s adjacent 25 acres, where it runs 293 units of public housing. 

The plans are for the housing authority and Pennrose, a Philadelphia-based developer, to tear down the existing units and build about 400 new mixed-income housing units.

About a third of those units will be market-rate, with the rest being subsidized. WHA director John Hill promised a “seamless transition” for current public housing residents who may be moved to other units while construction happens.

“The residents will be protected in this process,” he said. “When we move residents it will be at the expense of the Housing Authority and its partners.”

Elsewhere in Riverside, the EastSide Charter School plans to add a high school, graduate 100 percent of its new seniors and prepare them for college or a career, as part of the Purpose Built model’s “cradle-to-college” education strategy.

Will residents support it?

The groups want buy-in from neighbors.

When mixed-income housing was proposed in Riverside in 2011, some residents were worried they would be pushed out. 

Herring announced the new plans to Riverside residents before making the public announcement, hoping to address similar concerns.

“We’re definitely facing those fears,” Herring said. “We're going to walk them through every step of the way to ease any fears or unknowns they might have.”

Reach Riverside added two neighborhood residents to its board. Another resident, Gina Watson, who said at the news conference that she visited East Lake in Atlanta, urged her neighbors to get involved in the redevelopment so project planners know what residents want.

“I know it’s scary, change is a paralyzing process for some people,” she said. “The biggest partner in all of this is going to be the residents and that’s pretty much what I saw.” 

On Tuesday, residents at the news conference were hopeful.

Longtime residents Ronald and Cheryl Deaton called the redevelopment overdue.

“I hope young people can get jobs and help advance the area,” Ronald Deaton said. “It’s long overdue.”

Beatrice Patton Dixon, one of the resident board members, said she believes the plans can give a downtrodden neighborhood hope.

“The spirit, I hope it’s going to spread,” she said.

Contact Jeanne Kuang at jkuang@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2476. Follow her on Twitter at @JeanneKuang.