The Delaware State Housing Authority spent just over $8.1 million dollars on 68 Downtown Development Districts development projects across a dozen municipalities, attracting $118 million in private investment.
56 of those were small projects. The remaining 12 were considered large projects. An additional 15 large projects are also planned, using 5.5 million state dollars to generate another $174 million dollars in private investments.
Since its inception in 2014, DSHA says it’s used $47 million to leverage $693 million in private investment through 12 districts: Clayton, Delaware City, Dover, Georgetown, Harrington, Laurel, Middletown, Milford, New Castle, Seaford, Smyrna, and Wilmington.
Delaware State Housing Authority Director Matthew Heckles says he believes these investments in downtown areas are working.
“When you look through the types of projects that are happening in Smyrna and Millford and Dover and Laurel and Seaford, [the’re] just tremendous and they’re having a real positive impact on revitalizing downtown areas across the state.” he told DPM.
He notes this year was the first time the program felt stretched for funding - not from a lack of state commitment but rather an abundance of applicants.
Heckles says the program is receiving more applicants, and the DSHA is making changes to ensure the right ones get support.
“Just this last year, on the rebate allocation side, we made some changes to make sure that we had a better understanding of how to weigh certain impacts of certain projects against each other.” he said.
Heckles says as the program becomes more popular, it finds itself with less and less money to go around. He notes being able to discern which projects will make the biggest impacts remains a top priority.
Applications for the Downtown Development Districts program are still being accepted for this year with-large project applications are due by 3 p.m. on February 26th.
