Downtown cleanliness, security and outreach will continue to be the focus of the Municipal Services District.

Holly Childs, president and CEO of Wilmington Downtown Inc. (WDI), said that new strategies for Wilmington's Municipal Services District (MSD) going forward include several measures, such as further training for downtown ambassadors; working more with city police and social services; addressing the homeless in the city; and more lighting along the Riverwalk.

Childs gave an update to Wilmington City Council last week on the MSD in the past fiscal year and its initiatives moving forward.

“Our objective with the MSD is to offer enhanced services to the city of Wilmington," Childs said during her presentation.

The city of Wilmington maintains a contract with WDI to operate the city's MSD, an area generally designated as the Central Business District in downtown, from the Cape Fear Memorial Bridge to the Isabel Holmes Bridge.

For the MSD services, property owners within the MSD pay an additional tax of 7 cents on $100 of property valuation, according to the city of Wilmington.

The MSD maintained a budget of more than $407,000 in FY 2019-20 and has this fiscal year (FY 2020-21), a budget of nearly $445,000. Childs said Tuesday that WDI is currently working on a budget for the next fiscal year.

In the past fiscal year (FY 2019-20), however, the MSD, and its corresponding ambassadors program, helped more than 100 people through the vehicle escort safety program, pressure washed over 3 linear miles of downtown walkways and picked up more than 7 tons of trash, Childs noted during her presentation to city officials.

In addition, the ambassadors also removed more than 310 incidents of graffiti and nearly 600 stickers from city property, she said.

The program also generated more than 170 referrals to social service agencies and worked with the Wilmington Police Department to resolve 19 emergencies. There were also more than 2,450 business visits, she said.

The ambassadors program has dedicated about 13,000 hours to downtown in the past fiscal year, Childs said.

For the ambassadors program, WDI currently maintains one full-time operations manager, plus four full-time and one part-time ambassadors, Childs said.

There is more work to be done, however.

Childs said during her presentation that the MSD, through surveys, has made an impact, but surveyors are raising concerns about homelessness and panhandling; asking for additional flowers and plants hanging downtown; and improved lighting along the downtown Riverwalk.

Additionally, WDI is also looking for further training to develop the ambassadors program.

All are included in new MSD strategies moving forward, Childs said.

"We're also going to focus on alley activation," Childs added. "So the next project that's moving forward is kind of a pilot project for alley activation with the city. We are certainly going to help with that."

Increased marketing efforts and outreach to businesses will be another focus, she said. 

"I will say that I think we need to move beyond Front Street and Second and maybe Third to make sure we are reaching all the way up into the MSD and beyond the ground floor to make sure that we are reaching up into the buildings within the MSD too," Childs said.

WDI has hired someone specifically tasked with doing that sort of outreach and making sure that the MSD services are known to businesses, Childs said.

In addition, council has approved WDI to move forward with a proposed microloan program to help downtown area businesses, she said.

The WDI executive board on Tuesday morning approved going ahead with an agreement with Civic Federal Credit Union, which is planned to be the underwriter for the new WDI Microloan program.

In addition to the work within the MSD and the ambassadors program, Childs said, WDI will focus on getting the WDI Microloan Program up and running.

Childs said Tuesday that WDI aims to have the program open for applications by March 15. 

"We are very excited to present the program. We feel like it will have a tremendous impact on small businesses in downtown Wilmington and the surrounding districts," Childs said. "We think particularly post-COVID that businesses need all the help they can get, and we're providing a low market rate, below-prime rate program of up to $20,000 for qualified businesses within the area. So we're looking forward to helping 25 to 30 businesses or more with this program."

The WDI Microloan program, however, will go beyond what is in the Central Business District and it is separate from the MSD program. The microloan program, as approved by council, will extend beyond downtown and into the outlying districts such as the Soda Pop, South Front and Cargo districts.

"The microloan program and other things that we do not necessarily have to fit in the same parameters," Childs said. "Of course, we want to be mindful of downtown ... and the emerging districts and established business districts."