Wilmington's downtown needs more hotel rooms, retail space and a grocery store, Christina Haley, president and CEO of Wilmington Downtown Inc. (WDI), said Tuesday during the Greater Wilmington Business Journal’s Power Breakfast.

A market study shows the north end of downtown could support 300 new hotel rooms, Haley said, and she added that more retail space and a long-desired grocery store could help support the downtown business community and area residents.

“As our community grows with residents, we need something that can help them fill their refrigerators with fresh produce,” Haley said about the grocery store. “This has been a need for many decades, and I consider it a transformational project for downtown Wilmington.”

Haley was one of four downtown leaders who discussed ongoing development in and around Wilmington’s Central Business District and nearby emerging districts. Other panelists included Aubrey Parsley, the city of Wilmington’s director of economic development, Soda Pop District co-developer and A|C Hewitt Development president Andy Hewitt, and Kelly Reynolds, managing director and co-owner of the Cargo District.

As for a grocery store, the city is under contract with a development firm with plans to bring a grocery store to a city-owned property at 305, 315 and 319 Chestnut St., Parsley said, after Wilmington leaders accepted a bid for the site last year. He said the project appears to be “on track” and more information is set to be released later this year.

The city has focused recent efforts on leasing surplus space in the Skyline Center, a 12-story building the city purchased in 2023 for $68 million as part of the former Thermo Fisher Scientific and PPD campus.

“Over the last 24 months, the city has hit almost 100,000 square feet in leased space in the building, so that is quite a milestone for us,” Parsley said Tuesday. “We've got a great track record of bringing tenants in and solving for different situations and making what was really designed to be a single-tenant space work as a multi-tenant facility.”

City officials are also working to stabilize leasing in a city-owned office building at 115 N. Third St. in preparation for an eventual sale. They’re also focused on reviewing offers for a 3.26-acre tract of undeveloped land at 1001 and 1021 N. Front St., which has drawn interest from various developers and investors.

“We're trying to take an incremental approach to be smart about how we go through our disposition procedures on these really terrific portfolio assets we have on the north end of downtown,” Parsley said.

The Comprehensive Plan helps guide development efforts across the city, including in the downtown area. City officials are in the process of finalizing a draft of the Greater Downtown Plan, which will outline a vision for 18 neighborhoods, including downtown, the Brooklyn Arts District, Love Grove, the Soda Pop District, Carolina Place and the South Front District, among others. The Wilmington City Council is currently reviewing an initial draft of the plan, which is expected to be released to the public later this summer, Parsley said.

Hewitt, the Soda Pop District’s co-developer, said he sees the vacant land on the north end of downtown and pockets of the Central Business District as having some of the biggest development potential in the downtown area. Reynolds said Castle Street remains an area of high potential, too.

“We’ve always thought that Castle Street was a very underutilized corridor for downtown,” she said, adding that she envisions more retail, apartments and even a hotel to help bridge the space between the Cargo and Central Business districts.

Addressing issues like neighborhood interconnectivity, parking and walkability will require partnership and coordination between the private and public sectors, Hewitt said. In the Soda Pop District, for example, he said he’s working with city officials to add more street parking.

Coordinating public investment and private development is something Parsley said he thinks about a lot when it comes to ongoing development in the downtown area and issues like affordable housing.

“It's one of those efforts that require a team and a community to put together,” he said. “Although we have dedicated staff and we have programs and access to certain types of funding for endeavors like affordable housing, we are constantly having to learn and adapt to ever-evolving market conditions in tandem with the development community to try to figure out the right projects to fund and be a part of, and it's a moving target.”

Local business owners in the Brooklyn Arts District are also working with city officials to establish a social district along Fourth Street, which would allow people to purchase an alcoholic drink in one participating establishment and move freely within the designated social district area with that drink.

A pilot social district program was held on three Saturdays in February, and things ran smoothly, Haley said. Local business owners have submitted a proposal to the city to establish a permanent social district in the Brooklyn Arts District every Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. They're also working to better define a social district, she said.

“We have been working with the city of Wilmington on a set of standards and provisions … of what we want to see social districts look like in the future,” Haley said. “What are the constraints and what are the standards for implementing a social district should not only the Brooklyn Arts District want to have a more permanent social district, but any other community in the city of Wilmington.”

Reynolds and Hewitt said they see potential for a social district in the Cargo and Soda Pop districts, respectively. Hewitt added that the downtown area is filled with a group of “thoughtful developers” who together can help shape future downtown development.

“I think all of the components are here, all of the right people are here,” he said, “and waving the magic wand, it would be a solution … that brings all of the key stakeholders to execute on thoughtful development.”