Senators Tom Carper and Chris Coons recently visited Wilmington’s Kingswood Community Center to announce $10 million in funding for construction of a new center.
The current 7,494 square-foot building was built in 1958, serving the community in services ranging from early childhood care to senior wellness.
The new 100,000 square-foot facility will allow these programs to expand, and Carper says that means meeting the needs of even more area residents.
“The community center is multifaceted. Part of it will involve access to healthcare, part of it will involve access to just a healthy environment, nutritious food,” said Carper. “Part of it will involve early childhood learning so that when kids walk into school they’re not already hopelessly behind. So it’s multifaceted, and kids and families need all of those things.”
Coons says the $10 million Kingswood grant is one of the largest this year, and one of the first since the process of Congressional spending has changed - bringing back what were previously known as earmarks.
“Congressionally directed spending hasn’t happened in more than a decade,” said Coons. “It got a bad name under previous Congresses when the practice of having earmarked wasn’t transparent, wasn’t publicly vetted, and wasn’t targeted at necessary and admirable public purposes.”
This $42 million project will be the centerpiece of the Riverside revitalization project, which works to provide necessary programs and services to the people of the Riverside neighborhood and Northeast Wilmington.
