Market Street looks to escape crime's shadow

Shootings barely register with Jack Buckley anymore.

After 40 years of owning an independent bookstore in Wilmington’s Market Street business corridor, the 67-year-old has long since grown accustomed to the hallmarks of violence in the city.

“Obviously there’s crime not too far away, but it’s not right here,” he said. “It’s not on Market Street.”

Yet Buckley, who owns the Ninth Street Book Shop with his wife, Gemma, knows that may be an empty comfort to his customers.

“If I hear of a shooting four or five blocks from here, I know that’s a totally different neighborhood,” he said. “But to someone who drives in from the suburbs, I’m sure it sounds like it’s right next door.”

The business district along Market Street is one of the safest areas in Wilmington, according to police. Yet merchants say violent neighborhoods like West Center City, and a public perception that fails to distinguish between the city’s various neighborhoods, have created a public image of the city that does not match reality – particularly in the relatively tranquil shopping and entertainment district.

“In larger cities like Philadelphia and New York, people recognize some areas are good and some are bad,” said Scott Morrison, owner of Chelsea Tavern and Ernest & Scott Taproom. “Maybe it’s because this city is small and everything is closer together, but everyone assumes Wilmington is just one, singular place and crime is everywhere. Market Street may only be a few blocks away from rougher areas like West Center City, but they are 100 percent worlds apart.”

Wilmington is Delaware's largest city and through its business-friendly tax laws, is an economic driver for the entire Mid-Atlantic region. The downtown area has benefited from those laws, creating a thriving environment for banks, law offices and support industries. A company planning a new stock exchange for small- and mid-sized businesses, the Delaware Board of Trade, also is in talks to occupy a downtown space.

But the business community has had to deal with an uptick in crime. City officials and business owners have undertaken several initiatives over the years aimed at making the Market Street corridor safe and attractive to shoppers, students and visitors. Still, public perception remains an issue.

“My mom is really uncomfortable with me being in the city,” said Anna Sheeky, a 19-year-old Delaware College of Art and Design student from Claymont. “We had homicides almost every day for how long? I try not to spend too much time down here, and the latest I’ll stay is maybe 8 p.m.”

Business and community leaders say they are now hoping a host of new investments in residential and commercial development will finally allow the business district to overcome the public image they say has long kept the area from flourishing.

“Unfortunately perception is reality,” said Marty Hageman, executive director of Downtown Visions, a public-private partnership aimed at improving downtown. “For a long time, it’s felt like those two things haven’t matched on Market Street. But I think we’re reaching a critical mass that could finally change that perception to something positive.”

Building for the future

Much of that hope is based around developer Buccini/Pollin Group’s $125 million investment between Fourth and Ninth streets that will create three apartment communities with a combined 390 units.

“Nationally, more and more people are leaving their cars and commute behind to move back into cities for the exciting urban lifestyle,” said Mike Hare, senior vice president for Buccini/Pollin. "Our hope with these projects is to create that elusive critical mass of people who will both live and play on Market Street. These are people who will stay beyond 5 p.m., shop at these downtown stores, eat and drink at the restaurants and bars and create a real 24/7 lifestyle in the new downtown.”

MKT, shorthand for Market, is a combination of existing apartments and new high-end, loft-style units in three renovated buildings.

The first residents began moving into the 28 units at 608 Market St. in July, and only three vacancies remain. Located next to DCAD, the building is the first “ground-up apartment community on Market Street in over 50 years,” according to the developer.

The 46-unit building at 627 Market St. opened this fall. A former department store that most recently served as Delaware State University’s Wilmington Campus is about 20 percent leased. Another seven market-rate units are slated to follow at 829 Market St. next year.

Buccini/Pollin will hold a ribbon cutting in January for its 76-unit Market Street Village apartments. The three-building community includes a redevelopment of the former WSFS headquarters at 838 Market St. into a mix of 37 market-rate and low-income units, 24 units at 839 Market St. above a Walgreens drugstore, and 15 units at the site of a former furniture store at 6 E. Third St.

And starting next year, the developer plans to begin construction of a 230-unit apartment building called Residences at Midtown on the site of the former Midtown Garage at Ninth and Shipley streets.

Each building will include its own security guards, but Hare said the residents moving into Buccini/Pollin’s new apartments are younger business professionals who do not share the same perception of crime held by previous generations.

Surveys of those residents, he said, show that less than 1 percent identify crime as an issue of concern.

“It’s not an obstacle at all for the people who want to live here,” he said. “They can see this is a safe neighborhood and they feel confident coming home at night.”

Abdoul Hady, a software engineer for the health care company Anthem, moved to Buccini/Pollin’s The Residences at Rodney Square at 902 N. Market St. after living in Detroit.

“That was a very bad area so I was looking for someplace secure and calm,” the 28-year-old said. “There are cops everywhere (on Market Street), but there’s not much to do. Everything closes by 6 p.m.”

An influx of new residents like Hady is helping to spur additional investment along Market Street that could help make the area more fun for the millennial crowd.

Restauranteur Bryan Sikora, who opened La Fia Bakery + Market + Bistro at 421 N. Market St. in 2013 and this summer added the Mexican restaurant Cocina Lolo in The Renaissance Centre at 405 N. King St., is doubling down on the business district.

He spun out his bakery operation into Market Street Bread + Bagel, a new eatery that opened at 823 N. Market St., on Friday. Next month, he will open the doors to The Merchant Bar, which will serve up light bites and drinks across the street from La Fia.

“We’re trying to bring some energy to this area, which is what it needs more than anything,” Sikora said. “With all the residential development going on, Market Street has an opportunity to become a real social experience. But people need to feel like there is more than one reason to be here and they need to feel safe.”

Morrison, meanwhile, plans to launch 3 Doors Brewing Co., a microbrewery that also will serve barbeque and healthier lunch favorites, with the added luxury of curbside pick-up and delivery.

This spring, he’s also hoping to open a new beer garden near Chelsea Tavern at 821 N. Market St., where there is a walkway through to Shipley Street. The current building at 817 Market St. will be torn down as part of the Residences at Midtown project, opening room for Morrison’s 200-seat outdoor space.

“I see Market Street right now as right at the beginning of this critical mass with new people moving in who are going to bring this great energy,” he said. “We’re getting in on the ground floor of that renaissance.”

An overdue reemergence 

That change is long overdue, said Leonard Simon, owner of Wright and Simon, an 80-year-old men’s clothing store at 911 N. Market St.

“I’ve got customers who say they don’t want to come visit me anymore because they’re worried about crime,” he said. “It’s perfectly safe, but if you’ve got a perception, you’ve got a problem and Wilmington has had a problem for years.”

Once a vibrant center of commerce filled with bustling restaurants and thriving businesses, Market Street would swell each afternoon as thousands of office workers hit the sidewalk to search out lunch and complete mid-day errands.

“Back then, Market Street was a buzz of activity like you wouldn’t believe,” said Simon, who joined the family business in the mid-1960s. “In those days, my counters were lined with people, but it’s a different world today.”

Riots in wake the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968, followed nine months of National Guard occupation, were a turning point for the city, business owners say.

What had been a gradual population decline became a rapid exodus as Wilmington lost more than a tenth of its population per decade before reaching a low of 70,200 in 1980 – nearly 30 percent fewer people than four decades earlier.

Large corporations in downtown Wilmington also began opening offices closer to their workers in the suburbs, while shoppers there began heading to the Christiana Mall and other shopping centers rather than into the city.

“There were something like 8,000 DuPonters in this town back when we started and now there are none,” Buckley said. “Plus corporate culture has changed over the years. People stay at their desks for lunch nowadays.”

Thinner crowds also means less businesses and more nuisance issues such as panhandling. And Buckely says there are too many “adults acting like junior high kids” along the downtown corridors.

Those issues, on top of a near record number of shootings and murders in a city that already had been dubbed “Murder Town USA” by Newsweek a year earlier, is only fueling the perception that Market Street is dangerous.

Mark Fields, executive director of The Grand and the Playhouse at Rodney Square, said that has posed particularly difficult challenges for Market Street’s entertainment venues, which also include The DuPont Theatre and World Café Live.

“We’re not affected by changes in downtown worker population, but we are affected by the perception issue,” he said. “Our response has been to up our game in attracting bigger name artists and casting our net over a larger geographic area so we’re dealing with a population who doesn’t have that perception.”

In just the last week, he noted, the two venues were able to bring more than 9,000 theater goers and music lovers to Market Street for a touring production of “Annie” and classical music performances by a trio of legendary musicians – violinist Itzhak Pearlman, cellist Evgeny Kissin and pianist Michance Maisky –– and by Celtic Woman with the Delaware Symphony Orchestra, for the 39th annual Grand Gala.

“When people from Chester County, Delaware County or Philadelphia come down, they tell me they thought Wilmington was supposed to be this horrible place,” he said. “But they find everything is fine and they’re mystified by the perception, honestly.”

Bret Morris also is puzzled by attitudes regarding Market Street.

“I’ve worked here my whole life and never once had an issue with crime,” said the owner A.R. Morris Jewelers at 802 Market St. “But we have customers who say they would rather shop at our Greenville location because they’re uncomfortable coming into the city. People say it’s just a perception, but the fact is most of us live our lives based on perceptions.”

Safety in numbers

The commonly held belief that all of Wilmington is plagued by violent crime was closer to reality in the mid-1990s, according to Hageman.

“Crime in the business district was real, particularly purse snatching, car break-ins, muggings and even the occasional strong armed robbery,” the retired Wilmington police detective said.

Concerned that the city was losing its grip on downtown, Wilmington City Council created Downtown Visions and tasked the group with managing a new 70-block business improvement district.

Commonly referred to as the BID, the special tax district funds Downtown Visions through an added levy on downtown property owners that today collects about $2 million a year. One of the first initiatives launched by Downtown Visions was the ambassadors program, which created a small army of full-time paid workers who today patrol the BID in their distinctive yellow jackets.

At a starting wage of $9.75 an hour, more than a dozen “cleaning ambassadors” pick up trash, remove graffiti and clean sidewalks. Another 35 “safety ambassadors” act as a mix between neighborhood watch and Walmart greeters by giving directions, answering questions, checking alleys and parking garages, and providing free escort to workers and students walking to their vehicles.

Downtown Visions later bought 25 closed-circuit cameras to monitor the BID and donated them to city, along with a dedicated staff to monitor the feeds.

“We have so many levels of safety downtown now,” said Wilmington Sgt. Harold Bozeman. “And those layers have led to an overall decrease in crime and the relatively safety of the area.”

Bozeman supervises the Downtown and Riverfront Patrol unit, which deploys eight officers throughout the city’s central business district 15 hours each weekday and eight hours on Saturdays. The unit was first formed after Mayor Dennis Williams took office in 2013 and doubled in size last year.

“At the time, Mayor Williams was under a lot of pressure to stabilize the downtown because there were businesses leaving and threatening to leave,” Bozeman said.

“It seems to have reversed the tide,” he said. “I think the people who live here and the small businesses here understand the progress we’ve made. A lot of the misperception comes from people who commute here … and the only time they spend here is during their workday.”

A hill left to climb

Contrary to business owners’ claims, Market Street is not entirely crime free.

But it tends to be nuisance crime and low-level property thefts in the overnight hours, rather than the violence that grabs headlines elsewhere in the city, according to city police.

The 70-block downtown business district accounted for roughly 2.4 percent of drug crimes, 3.1 percent of aggravated assault cases, 3.1 percent of robberies, 3.4 percent of thefts and 5.5 percent of burglaries in the city through November, said department spokeswoman Sgt. Andrea Janvier.

The corridor, meanwhile, accounted for about 13 percent, of all cases involving disorderly conduct charges.

The commercial real estate company Jones Lang LaSalle reported in July that Wilmington’s central business district experiences 14-percent less crime than the citywide average and 46-percent less than the highest-scoring census tract in the city.

Those statistics have done little to assuage fears among some of the city’s largest employers, some of whom have spoken out about crime encroaching on the business district.

Delaware Supreme Court Chief Justice Leo E. Strine Jr. and others told The News Journal in January that out-of-town lawyers were being warned about wandering too far from their hotels. And a former general manager of the Sheraton Suites said in a 2014 public meeting that his business has trouble with handbags and cell phones being stolen. Richard Gessner, Delaware liaison at Capital One, complained to a meeting of state officials in 2014 that a senior associate had recently been mugged in broad daylight.

Westover Capital Advisors and Fidelity Investments also each moved to Greenville in the last year amid reported concerns over public safety.

Some also have questioned whether DuPont’s decision to relocate 800 to 1,000 employees out of the DuPont building to Chestnut Run near Greenville this summer was related to frustration with the city.

DuPont spinoff The Chemours Co., which replaced its parent company in the DuPont building and is now in the process of finding a permanent central office, raised public safety as a key concern with city officials in October, just weeks after 27-year-old Thomas “Cannibal” Cottingham was stabbed to death in Rodney Square after stepping in to protect a young mother and her infant from a man wielding a knife.

“That’s one of those seminal moments that make everyone stop and wonder what’s going on,” Buckley said of the murder. “And can you imagine what downtown would be like if Chemours left? That’s another 700 people who won’t be shopping downtown.”

Several store owners said they are pleased to see new development along Market Street. But some questioned whether those new residents would be enough to take the place of business lost elsewhere.

“All these buildings they’re trying to put up, who are they helping,” asked Wan Kim, owner of the hair care shop Crazy Discount at 611 N. Market St. “Who are they drawing in? They’re not drawing people for me. Maybe for the food joints and bars, but not me.”

An influx of residents along Market Street probably would not be a big boost for the Ninth Street Book Shop either, but Buckley remains hopeful.

“Who knows, maybe people will start to see Market Street as a real destination,” he said. “And you have to be in favor of anything that might change the public perception and finally make this a vibrant area again.”

Contact business reporter Scott Goss at (302) 324-2281, sgoss@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @ScottGossDel