Allen Davis can see plenty of downtown rooftops from the window of his office in the City of Wilmington’s administration building, but he wants to see many more. That’s because the more densely a downtown is built and populated, the better the odds of luring attractive development, he said.
Take a potential grocery store.
“We have a trade demographic problem because of the river,” Davis pointed out, explaining that a retailer looking at a new location calculates the number of potential customers within a certain radius. In the central business district, a grocer’s circle would include an expanse of river, where there are typically not a lot of groceries purchased.
“That’s why Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods went to the center of town,” he said.
Davis, who is the city’s urban design planner, has responsibility for all areas of Wilmington, but he maintains a special affinity for downtown, where he lives and works.
Still early in his career, Davis has lived in – and learned from – a variety of cities. Most recently, he was in Charlotte, where he earned two master’s degrees from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He worked as an urban planner in Asheville and began his career in Portland, Oregon, where he was an urban design intern with the city and earned certification as a charrette planner.
“We have an incredible amount of assets we should recognize and capitalize on,” he said of downtown Wilmington. “Water Street is our most European street, but there are not many businesses there. We have alleys that help connect destinations, but many people aren’t even aware of them. They’re all different – good for different things. Some are wide enough to drive through and have public entrances for businesses. There’s a study to be done of our alleys, with public engagement.”
Another underappreciated asset, he said, is the elevated walkway that runs behind the buildings on the west side of North Front Street between Grace and Princess streets. That stretch, which offers panoramic views of the riverscape, will be important in tying existing structures to new development at the site of the current Water Street parking deck – another asset just waiting to unfold, he added.
Davis is eagerly waiting to see what emerges regarding the current design proposal from the University of North Carolina School of Government’s Development Finance Initiative. That design calls for a multi-layered mixed-use development that would combine retail, residential and parking, with perhaps a green space component.
The city recently released a request for proposals from developers about the project.
“It’s essential to get Chestnut Street back,” Davis said of the design’s restoration of Chestnut between Front and Water streets.
Davis freely admits that Wilmington’s downtown has, in his words, “an identity problem.”
That’s because “downtown” is an inexact moniker with many people disagreeing on the boundaries. One definition is tied to the city’s 1945 corporate limits, which include the streetcar suburbs as well as Northside and Southside. Davis prefers to define it as the urban core bounded by the two bridges on the north and south ends and stretching eastward to Fifth Avenue. But within both those areas are many neighborhoods, with well-developed or nascent identities of their own, he said.
“Each neighborhood needs to be fostered, planned, zoned,” he said. “And the key to knitting together various neighborhoods downtown is the trolley, operating on north-south corridor with designated stops; a bus system that works better than the current one, possibly with a bus mall; and [creating] bikeability. Biking downtown is dangerous now. We don’t have the right layout, and we need better awareness and education for both cyclists and motorists.”
Davis biked to work when he lived in Portland, but said he does not commute via bike in Wilmington because downtown just isn’t bike friendly.
Besides making it easier to get around, efforts must create visual and physical continuities so that people will keep walking from one block to the next, Davis said.
As an example, he cited King Street in Charleston, which has been revitalized into an unbroken stretch of retail and restaurant uses, all on the same human scale, all with buildings coming right out to meet the sidewalk. That kind of building, Davis said, encourages exploration and fosters points of engagement where you can have outdoor entertainment or window displays that allow passersby to connect – even momentarily.
“That’s why Mayfaire works so well,” Davis continued. “It’s a mistake to suburbanize downtown design,” Davis continued, referring to mid-20th century infill downtown that plopped buildings into vacant spaces without connecting them to their surroundings, physically or visually. Often, those new buildings were set back from the street, and space around them turned into parking.
“People see that and stop. A critical issue in the next 20 years is how we address the gap between the northern riverfront district and the core of downtown. Right now it’s a difficult walk, and [a lack of connection] could turn the two areas into competing submarkets rather than working together,” he said.
One long-term evolution he foresees is the development of an arts warehouse district. Former warehouse structures could also house big-box stores that want to move into downtown, he said.
“Big box stores are going smaller because their current model is not working for them. They are good for rehabbed industrial districts,” he said. “The old Coca Cola building [on Princess Street] could be a grocery store, in which case their trade radius would be much better, because they have neighborhoods all around them.”
Successful revitalization starts with rooftops, he said.
“We have great spaces for [new development],” Davis said. “Some of those spaces are currently parking lots. We need to build structured parking and get rid of those surface lots. Structured parking, with appropriate ground floor engagement – like offices and retail – is one solution to urban development.”
Spotlight on Downtown
Click here to read about downtown’s ongoing cycle of revitalization.
Click here to read about a few of the early investors in downtown’s turnaround.
Click here to read about current real estate projects in the district.
