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Old Posted Oct 1, 2005, 2:55 PM
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mglan80 mglan80 is offline
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Location: Wilmington, DE
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Renaissance Centre Project Halted
Concern About Historic Structures, Ability to Attract Tenants Cited
BY MAUREEN MILFORD / The News Journal
09/30/2005

WILMINGTON -- Work on the $50 million Renaissance Centre has halted, raising questions about the future of the on-again, off-again project some see as key to downtown Wilmington's redevelopment.

The developer of the office, residential and parking project in the 400 block of Market Street is in discussions with the city about "various challenges" concerning the project, including the preservation of historic structures on the site, said Richard V. Pryor, the city's director of economic development. Also being discussed are the "office market realities," Pryor said, including the difficulty of attracting tenants.

The office building was announced as a speculative project -- or one being constructed without having a major tenant signed up. With the impending $35 billion sale of MBNA Corp. to Bank of America later this year and the possibility of job relocation or reduction, there has been concern that the credit card company could dump excess office space on the market. MBNA is the largest corporate owner of real estate in the city, with 1.3 million square feet of space or roughly 14 percent of the office space in the central business district, experts estimate.

"The last thing the city wants is to build a 10-story office building that's empty," Pryor said.

John Rago, communications director to Mayor James M. Baker, said he expects the project to go forward despite "the challenging market conditions."

"At this moment, they're not out of compliance and there have been no discussions about scaling back," Rago said.

Pryor said the city could end up changing the agreement that Renaissance Centre LLC of Wilmington, whose principal is Brock J. Vinton, struck with the city last year for the development of the block bounded by Fourth, Market, Fifth and King streets. The project has been considered a key to redevelopment of the downtown because it would help link the lower North Market Street area with Rodney Square to the north.

Vinton would not comment Thursday.

If the agreement is amended, it will be the latest complication in a development that has been in the works for more than five years. After initial plans in 2000 to build a hotel and office building on the site, the Renaissance Centre group reached a development agreement with the city in 2001 that called for a 225,000-square-foot office building and a 650-car parking garage.

But work was never started. Last fall, it appeared the entire deal was going to fall through after Renaissance Centre failed to purchase the land from the city and Wilmington UDAG Corp. by the deadline imposed in the development agreement. At that point, the agreement already had been amended.

The project was salvaged in November within hours of the deal being canceled after Renaissance Centre LLC paid $2 million of the $2.5 million purchase price. However, plans for the 1.4-acre city block were scaled back from the original to a 325-car parking garage and a minimum 140,000-square-foot office building on the vacant King Street portion of the block. Plans called for existing historic buildings on Market, King and Fourth streets to be renovated for residential and retail use.

The agreement stipulated that the entire project, including the historic restorations, must be completed by spring 2007.

The historic properties already have caused problems.

Work began in the spring on the demolition of four buildings at Fourth and King streets. In the process of cleaning up debris, the contractor hired by Renaissance Centre LLC accidentally hit the corner of a historic building targeted for preservation, according to R. Robert Ruggio, senior vice president of Commonwealth Group, a Vinton company.

At that point, work stopped.

Now, Ruggio said, the plan is to go back to the Wilmington Design Review and Preservation Commission in early November with a plan to dismantle the facades and rebuild them in their original form.

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Looks like we'll find out in late November whats going to happen to this project. They had originally planned for a fall 2006 opening, but since work has been done on the site since early June I'd say that time line is out of the question. With that in mind, it's doubtful they have any tenants signed at all. Hopefully they'll go forward, if not they'll have to give that parcel back to the city per the agreement.

This is the rendering:

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Last edited by mglan80; Oct 1, 2005 at 3:04 PM.
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