Why Should Delaware Care?
For 80 years, Kingswood Community Center has provided education and family services in one of Wilmington’s most vulnerable communities. Despite the challenges, the center has given residents access to services many would otherwise have to look elsewhere to find. Now in a new building, the organization hopes to expands its mission.
The Kingswood Community Center in Wilmington is completing its 80th anniversary year with a newly constructed $56 million facility.
The new building — built with a mix of public and private dollars — officially opened last week with a ceremony held its new gymnasium and attended by more than 200 staff, community members, and elected officials, including Gov. Matt Meyer.
During the ceremony, Logan Herring, who leads the nonprofit that runs the facility, said it exists to benefit the broader Riverside neighborhood, which for years had suffered as an isolated, low-income Black community.
“This is a $60 million investment in the Riverside neighborhood, a neighborhood that is so worthy of this investment,” Herring said, noting the cost of the $56 million facility as well as dollars spent on an early learning academy, a health center, and technology.
Of the total, more than $45 million came from state and federal governments.
Herring said the return on the investment will be ten-fold, as his goal is to help families work toward self-sufficiency and be able to pay for services the center provides.
“When those families are self-sufficient and … no longer need those subsidies, that’s another thing to boost our economy in a tide-to-lift-all-boats,” he said.
The two-story center on Rosemont Avenue is nearly five times the size of Kingwood’s former home that sat along nearby Bowers Street since 1958.
The new facility also serves as the home for Kingswood’s Montessori school, case-management program for families, a Nemours clinic and recreational activities.
Herring said his team also is working to phase in public access to the facility in 2027, which would include open hours to its fitness room, gymnasium and outdoor courts. The access would be available with the purchase of a membership, he said.
The construction of the facility occurred alongside broader efforts to revitalize Riverside by a coalition of nonprofits – called the WRK Group – which includes Kingswood, The Warehouse teen center and the redevelopment entity, REACH Riverside.
As part of those efforts, REACH Riverside has built over 600 new homes.
Herring has called the Reach Riverside redevelopment work a $600 million-plus effort.
A clinic, a school, and a rec center
The northeast Wilmington center traces its roots to 1946, when Kingswood Methodist United Church opened its doors to neighborhood youth for recreational activities. Kingswood grew to become a supportive arm for locals in an area long affected by crime and poverty, providing child care, senior care and social services.
“We wanted this to be a one-stop shop,” Herring said.
The new center houses the Ernest L. Webster Montessori Academy, named after the man known as “Mr. Kingswood,” the center’s first Black employee who worked at the center for more than 40 years. Herring said the academy will serve roughly 150 to 200 children, infants through pre-K, along with before- and after-school care and summer camp.
At the Nov. 6 ceremony, Rev. Theressa Holmes, a board member of Kingswood and Webster’s daughter, said her father knew Kingswood was never about “physical walls. It was about the people.”
Herring noted that the school does now use a tiered tuition system, based on income and family circumstances. A change as the school used to be free of charge.
Additionally, Nemours Children’s Health has taken over 15,000 square feet of the building for a pediatric health center. It will offer primary care along with specialty services the community asked for, including dental, vision, and pulmonary care.
The building also houses Kingswood’s Empower program, a team of coaches who work with families on goals toward self-sufficiency, including workforce and access to services.
There is also a new full-size gymnasium and an outdoor court. Herring said that when such spaces become open to the public, he anticipates a nominal fee membership based on individual circumstances.
The gym can seat 600 people for games or 1,500 as an auditorium, according to the EDiS Company – the construction company that built the new space. The building also includes a commercial kitchen and dining hall.
Herring said the new Kingswood center also hopes to provide food next year for its 100 employees and for those who live in the neighborhood.
On Wednesday, Spotlight Delaware also spoke to a handful of Northeast Wilmington residents, asking for their thoughts on the community center. Some had mixed feelings.
One resident, who lives near Nemours’ previous clinic along Jessup Street, was taking her children to see a doctor at the new Kingswood facility. She said she was surprised when Nemours doctors told her they had moved to the new center.
And she also believes the money could have been better spent on housing.
“Y’all put a doctor’s office inside of a community center with a bunch of kids. Why would y’all do that?” said the resident, who provided her name as India G.
Another resident, who lives nearby Kingswood with his two daughters, said he believes the investment is worthwhile, but noted that he misses the old Riverside housing projects because they remind him of growing up in the neighborhood.
“I just feel that if it’s for the kids, it’s the most important thing,” the resident Victor Harmon, said.
Other residents echoed the sentiment that the new facility is an asset. One, who only provided her first name as Carmen, said she currently utilizes the Empower program at Kingswood, which provides workforce training and personalized coaching.
“I think it’s really beautiful. I think they have a lot of resources,” she said.
A new era for Kingswood
The most emotional moment during last week’s opening celebration for Kingswood came from the Twin Poets — Al Mills and state Rep. Nnamdi Chukwuocha (D-Wilmington) — who grew up near Kingswood and later worked there.
In a spoken-word piece, the twins recalled a neighborhood they said had long been neglected and young people lost to the streets and gun violence. They also celebrated the area’s progress, and called the community center “a new beginning” for Riverside’s children and seniors.
Mills remembered a young man named Buff. If the new building and its resources had existed then, he said, Buff would have been inside the gym with everyone.
“He might still be alive,” he said. “He might have never been gunned down on those basketball courts under 95.”
Meyer, who taught sixth- and seventh-grade math nearby at Prestige Academy, said today’s kids face challenges unlike any before. He said Kingswood would “equalize opportunity” for kids in the area.
Other speakers included U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester, Lt. Gov. Kyle Evans Gay, Attorney General Kathy Jennings, Wilmington Mayor John Carney, and City Councilwoman Zanthia Oliver.
