Why Should Delaware Care?
The City of Dover has long struggled to bring foot traffic and economic activity downtown. The Downtown Dover Partnership hopes to change that with a full-scale revitalization project, but funding challenges are throwing aspects of the organization’s plans into question.
The Downtown Dover Partnership’s recently launched revitalization project is facing financing setbacks, losing out on $6 million of federal funding and major grant dollars it had hoped to receive earlier this month.
The first phase of the project, a four-story parking garage and public transit depot, is already underway and will be largely unaffected by the funding woes, Downtown Dover Partnership Executive Director Diane Laird said. But the project’s next phase, a mixed-use development including retail and workforce housing units, may be more dramatically impacted.
The organization had applied for $5 million in federal appropriation funds for its apartment complex on South Governors Avenue and a $1 million grant from the Longwood Foundation for the parking garage, neither of which it received.
But Laird said she is confident the funding setbacks will not be a major obstacle to the project. Instead, she will need to re-examine the funding “puzzle” and search for other possible revenue sources.
In response to not receiving the $5 million from the federal government, Laird said the partnership may have to adjust the number of workforce housing units planned for the apartment complex. Originally, 56% of the units in the complex were slated for affordable housing, but the number of low-income and workforce housing units might ultimately be “a little less than half,” she said.
“We’ve made a commitment to do our best to provide a mixed-income outcome,” Laird told Spotlight Delaware. “We’re still pushing hard to make that happen.”
Earlier this year, the organization shifted from a plan of 160 apartment units to 120, and decreased the building design plan by a floor to comply with city fire codes.
The Downtown Dover Partnership’s comprehensive revitalization plan, named Capital City 2030, is set to include the four-story parking garage, apartment complex, a grocery store, a riverwalk path, and a community amphitheater by 2030.
Some business owners and community leaders have expressed skepticism about the project’s ability to bring true revitalization to an area of downtown Dover that has long struggled with homelessness and drug use.
The ‘funding puzzle’
The Downtown Dover Partnership’s funding model includes a mix of grant applications and dollars appropriated from the state bond bill, of which the organization has already received more than $30 million, Board President Todd Stonesifer said.
Laird and Stonesifer said the organization has been rejected from a number of funding applications over the past couple years, including the federal appropriations request and Longwood grant. However, the two said they believe money will flow more readily into the project once they have broken ground on more than just the parking garage.
“As we get closer to final design stages, it’s just going to make a stronger case for our future applications,” Stonesifer said.
The partnership is slated to break ground on the apartment complex, named “The Governor,” by the fall of 2026.
On the federal funding side, Laird said the organization has submitted a number of grant applications for workforce housing subsidies to the offices of Sens. Lisa Blunt Rochester and Chris Coons and Rep. Sarah McBride over the past two years.
The $5 million request was picked up by Blunt Rochester’s office, Laird said, but the federal government ultimately decided not to appropriate any money to the partnership.
Ken Anderson, the Downtown Dover Partnership property development director, said the organization plans to apply for the federal money again in the spring, as well as for the New Market Tax Credit program, which would help with the upfront cost of the apartment complex.
While partnership leaders said the number of low-income and affordable housing units included in the complex could change, Stonesifer said it is “not a possibility” that they would abandon the affordable housing component altogether.
At the same time, Anderson said the Longwood Foundation’s rejection of the partnership’s $1 million grant application for the parking garage – internally called a “mobility center” – is a small hiccup, as leaders will only need to shuffle around a few small details to complete its funding.
“We feel very, very comfortable where we are with the mobility center capital funding stack at this point,” he said.
Wilmington-based EDiS Construction broke ground on the project, located on Bradford Street, in mid-October. The facility will eventually include a first-floor office space, 325 parking spots and a connection hub to other transportation, like DART buses and bike pathways.
Anderson said the group hopes to be “parking cars” by the end of 2026.
Laird said the Longwood Foundation seemed to be less interested in a parking-focused project among the other grant applications they received, but the foundation encouraged the partnership to re-apply for a grant for the apartment complex when eligible again in 2027.
The Longwood Foundation, a charitable investment fund founded by the du Pont family that is a major player in nonprofit funding, did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment about its 2025 grant recipients.
Amid the financing uncertainties, Stonesifer pointed to the example of Wilmington’s Riverfront Revitalization Project, which has been allocated hundreds of millions of state dollars since it began in the late 1990s. The Downtown Dover Partnership has received more than $30 million in state and federal funding since it began working on the revitalization plan about five years ago.
This, Stonesifer said, gives him hope that the state government will continue to support the revitalization plans as the project progresses in the future.
“It’s the city,” Laird added. “It’s a public realm, so it’s suitable for the state to invest in key projects.”
Get Involved
The Downtown Dover Partnership holds public meetings every month. The group’s next meeting will be held at 7:30 a.m. on Jan. 28, 2026 inside Dover City Hall.
Funder Notice
The Longwood Foundation has supported Spotlight Delaware with a multi-year grant. The funding bears no impact on Spotlight’s editorial decision-making per our Editorial Independence Policy.