Perfect Landing

Mixed-use development brings residential to Wilmington's waterfront

By Sheila Bacon

Historically an industrial hub, the city of Wilmington is changing. A new residential development on the south side of the Christina River is bringing life back to an area long ignored.

The Residences at Christina Landing will introduce the first residential towers to Wilmington's Christina River Waterfront.

The latest addition to Wilmington's waterfront may well redefine the city's industrial character.

The Residences at Christina Landing project represents the first sizable development on the south side of the Christina River and the first riverfront residential project modern-day Wilmington has ever seen.

A 23-story apartment tower will complete in November. The first of 63 new town homes, built in the shadow of the towers, also finished up last month on the seven-acre site. The development will soon be joined by phase two, a 23-story condominium tower and seven-story parking garage breaking ground this spring with move-in scheduled for the third or fourth quarter of 2006.

Until recent years, the riverfront has been known as an industrial area - home to aging warehouses and dilapidated buildings. Ambitious efforts a decade ago brought restaurants, shopping, offices and a riverfront trail to the north side of the Christina River, but the south side remained undeveloped, undesirable and visually unattractive.

Until now.

"Residential development is a follower, not a leader," said Michael Purzycki, executive director of the Riverfront Development Corp. of Delaware, a group formed by the state in 1995 to foster economic development. "People make big investments after all the amenities are in place. It happens when the public feels confident in the future and that the developers will continue to perform. We've finally reached that point."

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The public's reaction to the development has been favorable. The apartment tower's leasing group is compiling names of those interested in renting, and all 63 town homes were presold after just six weeks on the market.

The high demand for the residences led to plans to build the condominium tower. Scheduled to break ground in April, 60 percent of the units have already been presold.

"We were a bit cautious," said H. Wesley Schwandt, partner and director of construction for The Buccini/Pollin Group of Wilmington, the project's developer. "There were a lot of naysayers. A lot of people thought residential living in downtown Wilmington would never come back."

The Buccini/Pollin Group believed in the south side of the river so much that it recently built its new office headquarters on five acres adjacent to the Christina Landing development.

Design and Construction

The completed development, pictured in this rendering, will include a 23-story apartment building, a 23-story condominium tower and 63 town homes.

Philadelphia architecture firm Kling developed the mixed-use residential master plan strategy for the site. The development takes inspiration from the nearby river-walk trail and is centered on the creation of an urban park-like space bordering the river. The town homes meander along the south edge of the green space, leading up to the apartment tower.

Architects Robert Little and Richard Farley delivered a traditional look with the town homes, but with a modern twist. When scouting out design ideas for the residences, the two took an elevator ride to the top of a downtown Wilmington high-rise and looked down onto the waterfront buildings below. They noticed many of the older, rehabilitated buildings had metal roofs - a design element they worked into the town homes.

"Wilmington is a conservative town from an architectural point of view," said Little, the design principal. "We dialed back from ultramodern, but still gave people an alternative to flower boxes, double-hung windows and shutters."

Brick complements the homes' gabled, standing-seam metal roofs. Brick also is used on the apartment tower's façade. The apartments feature punched square windows, balconies and floor-to-ceiling glass in some places.

The apartment tower is a concrete-frame structure, which is unusual in Wilmington where builders typically favor steel.

Gilbane, the Providence, R.I.-based construction manager with offices in Wilmington, is building the apartment tower and town home foundations. BPGS Construction, an affiliate of The Buccini/Pollin Group, is the general contractor for the town homes. Gilbane will also build the condominium tower.

Crews raised the entire site between 2 to 6 feet above the floodplain before construction started. Unfavorable soil conditions required all town homes to sit on structural pads atop pressure-injected piles driven between 60 and 70 ft. deep. The apartment tower is built on steel H piles driven to depths of 70 ft.

The tower is a concrete-frame structure, unusual in a city that typically favors steel. Concrete construction is faster, however, and a unique flying form system allows crews to complete a floor every five days. That's much quicker than the two-plus weeks required for conventional concrete-forming methods, said Sean Healy, secretary and treasurer of Healy Long and Jevin, the Wilmington-based concrete contractor.

The site's location, far from adjacent structures, allows crews to use the flying form system, which utilizes a tower crane to move forming tables from underneath finished concrete floors, out beyond the site footprint and up to the next floor's pour location.

Concrete contractor Healy Long and Jevin of Wilmington used a flying form system which allowed crews to complete a floor every five days, much quicker than the two-plus weeks required for conventional concrete-forming methods.

Healy Long and Jevin's engineers worked closely with form supplier Aluma Systems of Toronto, which created custom forms to ensure Healy Long and Jevin's crews could keep up with the schedule's fast pace.

While airspace for flying tables is plentiful, laydown and staging at ground level is at a premium. With most of the site occupied by the town home pads, little room is left for material laydown and equipment staging.

"Were treating it like a downtown site," said John Groth, senior project manager for Gilbane.

Coordination will become even more critical as the project progresses. With the first of the town homes now completed, Gilbane is continuing construction on the apartment tower, requiring contractors to work around move-in efforts of the development's first residents.

"It's neat to see how it's developing and gaining momentum," Groth said. "Here, you're creating a community."

Revitalizing the Waterfront