‘Brand new heart’: Kingswood Community Center the latest jewel in rejuvenation of Wilmington’s Riverside

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Logan Herring gushes as he leads a small group of visitors through the massive and sparkling new Kingswood Community Center that will open this fall in Wilmington’s rejuvenating Riverside neighborhood.

“Ready to be wowed?” he asks the group, which includes U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., members of her staff and a WHYY News reporter. “You’re going to be, like every 5 feet. So come this way, come this way, come this way.”

Herring points out modern new classrooms for the 80-year-old social service agency’s expanding preschool program. There’s a tennis court-sized commercial kitchen and an equally large dining room.

The gleaming gymnasium can hold 600 spectators and double as an auditorium for 1,500 guests. Upstairs, a pediatric health center will have about 80 examination rooms.

In one hallway, a circular terrazzo tile floor has a map of the United States, with Delaware highlighted and an enlarged map showing Riverside in orange and Kingswood in green.

“Just take a minute and look at it,” Herring instructs. “That green is the building you’re standing in. So kids from Riverside can understand they can have an impact in the world.”

Welcome to the newest jewel in the monumental transformation of Riverside, an ongoing $500 million-plus reclamation project that was detailed in WHYY’s “Resurrecting Riverside” documentary, which debuted in October 2024.

Total transformation of long-neglected Riverside

Aging, dilapidated, low-slung brick apartments are being razed and replaced with 800 homes in the new Imani Village. A multistory apartment building for older residents will hold the new senior center and a medical center serving them. There’s The Warehouse, a center for teen education and recreation. The state’s only STEM Hub for science, technology, engineering and mathematics adjoins the growing Eastside Charter School.

And in November, the towering new 81,000-square-foot steel, brick and glass Kingswood will open. The structure is nearly five times larger than the current one-story brick building that has been the heart of Riverside for 80 years.

“If Kingswood was the heart before, it’s the whole body now,” said Ray Fitzgerald, executive director of the Wilmington Housing Authority. “It’s just building on everything that was done before. It’s just doing it bigger and better and bringing more resources and more support for the community.”

Herring, who is Kingswood’s executive director and holds the same title with REACH Riverside, the organization that’s guiding the neighborhood’s redevelopment, spoke about his pride in the projects before letting WHYY News join the sneak peak he gave Blunt Rochester and a few local government officials.

“We just frankly outgrew the old building,” Herring said. “So it’s a heart transplant, a brand new heart for the community and we’re so happy to bring it to them. Every square inch of that building has been thought of, has been manicured with the community in mind — and actually the community helped design it.”

Herring, who took over Kingswood 10 years ago and was later tapped to lead the Riverside rejuvenation, said he sometimes walks around to marvel at what his team has accomplished in executing a vision financed by developer tax credits, government grants and philanthropy.

“And in a matter of the next year or two, most of this will be complete,” Herring said.

Blunt Rochester, who grew up in Wilmington about 2 miles from Kingswood, said she’s delighted to see the area “thriving” with the new housing and other key amenities.

“It’s just so inspirational,” she said. “I think about the seniors who lived to see this day, but I also think about the kids who are going to live in safe, affordable housing in a community center with state-of-the-art resources, as well as a caring community. That’s really what this is about.”