What you see here is Delaware’s gaping lack of coordination between “hey this is a great idea let’s suck up some empowerment zone grants or other some such free taxpayer cash to make it look like we give a crap about converting this WWII era crumbling hulk (abandoned factory owned generationally by Governor Carney’s family until it went bust) into a mixed use housing shopping and arts project” …and “oh shit so sorry we blasted through all that free cash on development and engineering and so now we see no viable future for this project so you can have your crumbling brick time bomb back and we’ll just take our signs down and leave town” and this rich fat cat connected platoon of parasites keeps preying on the trigger point festering in Wilmington: affordable housing shortage! This could’ve been - should’ve been - fully operational by now but they created this artificial bubble of perceived luxury returns on their risk and kept ratcheting up the dollar per square foot occupancy price points beyond anyone’s interest. And this is repeated over and over and over here apparently without conscience leaving abandoned warehouses, blocks and blocks of condemned townhouses, defunct businesses churches and schools, where real change real empowerment and real self esteem could be happening right now. Instead they’re just rat condos and junkie dives 😒
Look closely and you’ll see the nice reconstruction of the top floor windows, but also note the lack of maintenance is already eating even this paltry progress away. Gaze lower and you see the vaunted Jurassic-esque timeline at about the exact time the cash disappeared. You see the rusting cast iron window frames yielding to both their own oxidation demise and a crushing compression of the brick wall as salty air conduced rot permeates and crumbles the physical structure of the mortar joints turning them basically into worthless fly-away sands. The upper windows were expensively redone in haste trying to upsell the view of Wilmington’s Christina River. But just like any misguided missile, throw all your eggs into just one plotline and don’t be surprised if you end up egging yourself 😉
