RIVERPLACE of Wilmington.

It’s a name that will be repeated many times in coming years throughout the region as one of the major projects that’s transforming the city’s downtown.

That’s because it’s the new, and much easier to say, name of the highly anticipated Water Street parking deck mixed-use redevelopment project. The change was revealed Thursday night to a crowd of about 360 people at a Wilmington Downtown Inc. event.

“Over the coming weeks and months, you’ll be seeing us roll out websites, advertising and kind of branding full scale for RIVERPLACE of Wilmington, which we’re really excited about,” said Lee Perry of Chapel Hill-based East West Partners, the company with which city officials are currently in the development agreement negotiation process for the public-private partnership.

In addition to the moniker, Perry said the firm is establishing a RIVERPLACE sales office downtown at 228 S. Front St. that it will share with Intracoastal Realty of Wilmington.

“We’re doing the finishing touches on the office now and plan to kind of have a grand opening sales and marketing promo . . . some time in December,” Perry said.

He said Intracoastal Realty will be putting a general brokerage office downtown with eight to 10 full-time agents, while the sales office for RIVERPLACE will be led by the Jimmy Hopkins Team of Intracoastal.

Perry was one of six developers featured at the event Thursday evening, held at the Coastline Conference Center, to share information about current and planned downtown projects during the fall session of WDI’s Downtown Economic Series.

The other developers were Tom Davis of CityBlock Apartments, which is more than 83 percent leased and will be added to; Brian Eckel of the recently completed 101 N. Third St. office building; Blair Booth of Sawmill Point Apartments, currently under construction along the northern portion of the Cape Fear River in downtown Wilmington; Chuck Schoninger of the Port City Marina, a northern riverfront project that will also hold two restaurants, the Indigo Hotel and some land for potential future development; and Todd Saieed of Pier 33 Apartments, another northern riverfront project for which construction is not yet under way.

The audience that came out to hear them speak showed how much interest downtown's transformation has sparked, WDI officials said.

"As we were putting this together tonight, we were hoping for 200 and we ended up last I heard today about 2 o’clock, with 361," Ed Wolverton, president and CEO of WDI, told the crowd Thursday before the developers took the stage.

During his portion of the presentation, Perry also explained details about RIVERPLACE, the plans for which have remain largely unchanged since city officials in February chose East West’s proposal to start negotiations.

“Where we are in the schematic phase of the project is we have two residential towers. What we call the South Tower, is the tower we see at the corner of Chestnut and Water [streets]. Those homes are being planned as for-sale condominiums. They will be larger homes, an average of about 1800 to 1900 feet across the homes. There’ll be 48 of them on levels four through 12 of the building,” Perry said. “Then adjacent to that, you’ll see what we call the Water Street wrapper, which is the buildings that face out onto Water Street kind of directly in front of the Hilton.”

The parking garage sits behind and under the entire development, he said. Behind the Water Street wrapper is the project’s North Tower, which will consist of 115 units that are currently planned as rental units, Perry said.

“The concept is to have a for-sale component and then a for-rent component as well,” he said.

The company also plans to incorporate commercial space, including offices, stores and restaurants.

“At street level, where Chestnut hits Water Street, is kind of the main feature of the project," Perry said. "We’ve got retailed planned on that section of Chestnut and then wrapping all the way down Water Street down to where basically the Cotton Exchange starts. And so our goal here is to really kind of tie in what’s going on with the historic district and all the energy there and all the energy that’s moving toward the north riverfront, which we just heard about, and kind of tie all that in as opposed to what’s there now, which is a dark, kind of dead area that really is kind of a gap between all the great things that are going on between those great places."

Check back later for more information on the projects and from the WDI event.