Community breaks ground on new Kingswood Community Center

EJP and REACH Riverside (also called the WRK Group) wrote the Choice Neighborhoods Implementation grant application for the Northeast Wilmington neighborhood, securing $50 million in federal funding. The Kingswood Community Center (KCC), a new, $50M, 80,000sf Community Center, will dramatically increase the number of amenities and educational and

family programs available to residents. The new KCC will create 163 construction jobs

and 32 new, permanent jobs in early education, youth/family programming, facility

management, and nonprofit administration as well as expand the Kingswood Early Learning Academy (ELA) to serve three times the current number of children.

Rachel Sawicki / Delaware Public Media Elected officials, community leaders, and other supporters ceremoniously break ground on the new Kingswood Community Center project.

By Rachel Sawicki

August 8, 2024

A groundbreaking for the new Kingswood Community Center in Wilmington drew a huge support Thursday.

More than 200 people gathered to celebrate the start of a two year build on the new 70,000 square foot facility.

Kingswood Community Center has been a cornerstone in Riverside for 78 years, providing a wide range of services and programs to support the well-being and development of its residents.

State Sen. Darius Brown describes the new center as a haven and an oasis for every generation. It will include an early learning academy, a senior center, and recreational spaces.

He says this is part of a holistic approach to transform the North East side.

“With the work that we’ve done to change public housing in partnership with the Wilmington Housing Authority, with Reach Riverside, the expansion of the Teen Warehouse, we are literally connecting families and generations together and providing them with services to create pathways out of poverty and expand upward mobility for residents in the City of Wilmington,” Brown says.

The old building on Bowers Street will be demolished to make room for the new center.

Funding for the $56 million facility is coming from several state and federal buckets – The state allocated $10 million in the FY22 Bond Bill and $4 million from its ARPA funds. The federal delegation secured $13 million. And The WRK Group also received a HUD Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant of $50 million (corrected from $4.5 million which is the designated Critical Community Improvement (CCI) amount for the Kingswood Community Center project) for neighborhood redevelopment.

Kingswood is one of three organizations that make up the WRK Group. WRK Executive Director Logan Herring says the new center represents hope and inspiration.

“The love, the programming, the excellence is there, but we just can’t serve as many people as we would like to because we just don’t have the physical space," Herring says. "And so the new building, with all the bells and whistles its going to have, the most important thing its going to be able to provide us from a physical, contextual standpoint is space.”

Herring says there is still a $10 million gap in the funding needed to complete the project, but they have enough to get started. Herring adds he expects additional support from the state and federal government.

See original article on https://www.delawarepublic.org/politics-government/2024-08-08/community-breaks-ground-on-new-kingwood-community-center?utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery.

By Rachel Sawicki