Ed Wolverton began his job in October as president and CEO of Wilmington Downtown Inc. (WDI) with the goal of revitalizing the city’s historic downtown. After previously serving as the director of downtown programs in Greensboro and Wichita, Kan., Wolverton looks to bring his nearly 30 years of experience to help enhance economic development downtown.

GWBJ: What do you think are downtown Wilmington’s hidden assets that would attract businesses?

EW: We do have a good mix of architecture and building stock. If someone is looking for a funky old historic building, we have that. If someone is looking for something a little more modern, mixed-use office building, we have that, too. It really has a setting that is appealing to young professionals and even older folks as well, such as myself.

It offers a great mix of amenities for business settings. You literally can go park your car and go to your office, walk to the accounting office, walk to web design centers. That’s something that our urban centers offer: there is much more connectivity than many suburban office parks.

GWBJ: What are some incentives WDI is looking to use or is currently using to help encourage businesses to relocate and stay downtown?

EW: WDI does have one program that we’re actually taking a real close look at right now to figure out how to strengthen and improve. It’s been in place a number of years. With my arrival, we’re going to step back a little bit and reexamine the program and see how it can work better. How can we make it more appealing to investors?

It’s really [for] a range of investors, certainly geared toward small entrepreneurs but also looks at larger investors as well. We’ll take the next 60 days to see how we’re going to improve upon that existing program.

GWBJ: In the past WDI has relied a lot on state and federal funding, but now much of that funding’s being reduced due to budget cuts. What is WDI looking to do in order to compensate for these losses?

EW: Certainly public policy-oriented, we’ve done a good job I think in cataloguing the 11,000 people that work downtown on a daily basis. That makes downtown, certainly per capita, the largest employment center in the area – a huge tax base that contributes to our local government. I think our elected officials and state officials realize that the number of businesses, the jobs that are created, the tax base that it generates – it is really crucial for caring for the economic development efforts for the community.

We’ve been fortunate in manufacturing those relationships and partnerships, but we could do a better job in getting the message out.

On the state level, one of the big programs has been historic preservation tax credits. These mobilize tax credits for folks that are renovating buildings for mostly commercial, but residential buildings can apply as well. You do have to get approval, but they can become a very powerful tool to help spur building renovations.  
 
GWBJ: What are your short-term goals for WDI, and what are your long-term goals?

EW: I’ve been in this field for over 28 years, so I consider myself to be an expert in the downtown revitalization field, but I have to become an expert in downtown Wilmington. So, that’s where my short-term focus is right now.

I’m really spending a lot of time meeting with stakeholders, business owners, property owners, local officials, elected officials, entrepreneurs and developers to get their sense of things that we need to improve upon. Then we’ll begin working with our board of directors.

I set of goal of having 100 meetings in 100 days, and I can say after eight days I’ve had 13 of them. So it’s a long process … After the first year, we’ll be moving toward developing a more formalized work program.

Realizing what our staff resources are and financial resources are, we need to be focused on what our efforts are going to be to make sure we are carrying out those activities.

GWBJ: It seems that the entertainment and restaurant industries are doing well downtown, but it appears that traditional retail is not doing so well. What are some methods and incentives that WDI is looking to use to improve traditional retail downtown?

EW: Well it’s not just our downtown, it’s every downtown. Independent retailing is very, very tough across the entire country, and WDI has done work with consultants to really evaluate what the retail market is, who we’re trying to attract and who we should be trying to get to come downtown. So we’re doing a survey to figure out what those niches are … We’re probably going to be more focused on locally owned and operated shops.

If a national retail called we’d look into that, but most of the time what they’re looking for is not designed for an urban area.  

GWBJ: Are there any plans to replace some of the seemingly undesirable businesses downtown?

EW: No, there are no plans to do that. When you really kind of look back and look at the downtown development process and kind of look at it over the period of 40-50 years, you know 40-50 years ago all the department stores were downtown, and then in the ‘70s the shopping malls really came to life. What you saw in the ‘70s really accelerated the decline of many downtowns, not for sure Wilmington, but many downtowns, and that’s when most downtowns really hit their bottom.

We do have a situation where we do have privately owned businesses where they’re not centralized – unlike Mayfaire – where each building is independently owned and operated separately from the other.    

While retail is the desired use, we’re not to that point right now. We do have vacancies, not just along Front but on Princess Street and Second as well.

There’s kind of like a reversefunnel … Your goal may be a retail women’s clothing store, but the space may not be in a condition to support that. So it may be you get a seedy bar in there, but they have a three-year lease, and after three years their lease expires, and the landlord says ‘Oh well, you know maybe we get a nicer bar.’ Then after two to three more years you say ‘Oh well, we might be able to get a law firm in there.’ So you start this trend of going up in terms of growth reaching.

GWBJ: What are WDI’s plans to support more residential property?

EW: I don’t think we’re going to see a lot of opportunities for 20-50 acre sites. We’re more looking at infield type of development. We’re cobbling developing individual acres as well as maybe 2-3 acres to do something. [With] the availability of land, I think that we have to make sure that we have a good handle on what developing rules are and how do we translate those …

Obviously there’s going to be a strong sensitivity to historic preservation, which there should be. Yet we also have to recognize that it’s gotta be something compatible with our store buildings.

Housing is a big thing, but [with] commercial development I think there is more opportunity for class-A office space. A lot of these serving parking lots are underused right now, and I think that could be looked at for potential development sites.