Author: Larry Nagengast

In less than 10 years, Precision Color Graphics has built a client base that extends up and down the East Coast and as far west as California

The location—the Riverside section of northeast Wilmington —isn’t exactly picturesque, but Simon Cranny says it’s ideal for his business, Precision Color Graphics.

His shop, a converted warehouse originally built for a heating and air conditioning company, is tucked away on Todds Lane, a couple of blocks east of Northeast Boulevard, a few long home runs from the site of the old Wilmington Ballpark, where the original Blue Rocks played from 1940 to 1952.

“When we were renovating [in 2013], some people were telling us the area was dangerous, that we’d have to put in roll-down doors over our entrance,” Cranny says. “We ran out of money for the doors, but we put in lights and cameras for security.”

As Cranny points out, for a regional business, the location couldn’t be much better. With I-495 a mile away, it’s just a 20-minute drive to the Philadelphia Airport or downtown Newark.

Precision Color Graphics was founded in 2007 as a short-run digital print/copy, large format and banner production operation, with its shop at the foot of Wilmington’s Seventh Street Peninsula. The business survived a personal crisis—Cranny’s massive heart attack on July 1, 2008, suffered while he was jogging in Rockford Park—and the recession of 2008-09 before expanding into the larger production and custom display and installation operation housed on Todds Lane.

The defining moment—the project “that kind of gave me my street cred,” Cranny says—was production and installation of the 114- by 22-foot mural extolling Wilmington’s musical heritage. It wraps around the second and third floors of the former Delaware State University building at the corner of Sixth and Market streets.

Cranny, 50, a native of Ireland, moved to the United States when he was 24. He expected to stay in Wilmington with his brother for a couple of weeks before heading to Boston with some rugby-playing friends to do some asbestos-removal work. But he went to a party at O’Friel’s, where his brother worked, met the woman he would marry and, except for a six-month stay in London, has been here pretty much ever since.

Having studied accounting in Ireland, he landed a job handling the books for Color Repro, one of the many color print shops that served the city’s bustling advertising/marketing/graphics design community in the 1990s. It didn’t take long for him to find that the front end of the business—meeting customers, taking orders, making prints and beating the constant deadlines—was more exciting than crunching numbers.

“It gave me a bit of a buzz doing that kind of stuff,” he says.

Cranny had been working at Color Repro for a couple of years when a colleague opened a new print shop, MetroColor, and he switched to the new business. In 2003, Parcels Inc., a larger printing and delivery operation, bought out MetroColor. Cranny stayed with Parcels for four years before striking out on his own.

Having worked downtown for nearly 20 years, he had hoped to locate Precision Color there because he would be closer to many of his clients. But the space he needed—both for the shop and to store his vehicles—just wasn’t available.

“We had 3,000 square feet [at our first location] and now we have 10,000,” he says. In addition, he has 6,000 square feet of parking space, enough to accommodate a bucket truck, two delivery vehicles, the installers’ van and dumpsters.

While the neighborhood has the somewhat grungy look you might expect in an industrial area that’s home to a traditional print shop, a commercial frame shop, a trucking company, a truck rental business and a stone veneer manufacturer, Cranny had the Precision Color Graphics workplace designed to be warm and inviting while paying homage to its earlier uses.

Wooden trusses, weighing 22,000 pounds each, support the roof, and the valves and piping for the sprinkler system stand to the right of the main entrance. Bright red and lime green paint brighten the concrete block walls in the work area and new windows high on the rear walls bring in more light.

“It’s a nicer way to spend your day,” Cranny says, adding that six of his eight fulltime employees have been with the business for at least five years.

Spread around the shop are examples of work for easily-recognized clients—the University of Delaware, Wilmington University, WSFS Bank and the Delaware Lottery. But those big local names are just a fraction of the company’s workload.

The convenient location, coupled with the contacts Cranny has made during his 20-plus years in the business, have enabled Precision Color to build a client base that extends up and down the East Coast—and as far west as California. (The company also has a satellite office in Chicago—one that focuses on trial board displays and audiovisual setups for law firms in the Windy City.)

How did that happen?

“There’s a price and trust advantage,” Cranny explains. “We had done signage, wall murals and displays for a commercial kitchen business in New Jersey. They were taking over a facility in California, and they called and said, ‘we know what you’ve done for us in New Jersey. Can you match that out here?’”

He could indeed. In fact, with the equipment in his shop, Cranny feels he can match almost any competitor.

A flatbed printer can handle pieces of up to 8 by 10 feet on just about any surface imaginable, including acrylic, vinyl, wood, blinds and foam core. Four 60-inch large-format printers produce images on a wide variety of media, from standard paper to backlit and eco-friendly materials.

A CNC router (the letters stand for “computer numerical control”) enables custom cutting of signage and display pieces into virtually any shape the client desires.

Not every piece of equipment is of recent vintage. Printing and installing banners makes up a significant portion of the company’s work, and the stitching for many of those banners is accomplished with an industrial-grade Singer sewing machine, made in Germany in 1947, the same year the shop was built.

Another of Precision Color’s relatively new services is printing and installing car wraps. In addition to wrapping vehicles owned by local businesses, Precision Color makes wraps for Carvertise, the three-year-old Wilmington business that recruits commuters to have their cars wrapped for several months at a time as part of marketing campaigns for regional businesses.

“Simon is great. His shop is high quality and always delivers on time,” says Greg Star, Carvertise co-founder.

As part of their arrangement, Cranny lets Carvertise’s wrap team use his shop’s heated car bay for weekend installations. “We’re getting really good at it,” Star says. “We’ve gone from taking an hour and a half to complete a wrap down to half an hour.”

When Carvertise is working on a campaign outside the region, Precision Color prints the wraps and ships them to the destination, where Carvertise uses its employees or subcontractors to complete the installation.

Star also praises Cranny as a mentor. “He’s been super helpful, not only in providing services but also in talking to us about how the printing industry works,” he says.

Now firmly established in his new location, Cranny says Precision Color has plenty of opportunity to grow. Right now, he’s operating with a single shift, and he’d love to hear that printing equipment humming for twice as long each day.

“The goal is to go to two shifts,” he says. “To spend a lot on machinery and turn it off at 6 o’clock, it just breaks your heart.”

Our Town Series: This is the third in a series of profiles about communities throughout Delaware.

The state’s fifth largest town is walkable, friendly, inexpensive, accessible, filled with entertainment options and business-friendly

As a manager for Hercules Inc. for 41 years, Joanne Masten traveled the world, but she has lived in the same house since she was 18 months old—on West South Street in Smyrna.

In her childhood, the location was convenient. “I went to school for six years across the street and for six years up the street,” she recalls.

And it’s just as convenient now, since it’s only four blocks from Town Hall, where Masten, now Smyrna’s mayor, spends much of her time.

“She’s the best unpaid ambassador I could get my hands on,” says David Hugg, the town’s manager since 2002.

For proof, just ask Carol Forsythe.

Earlier this year, Forsythe and her husband, Eric Svalgard, decided to relocate and rename their Wilmington-based music education business. Forsythe and her daughter hopped in a car and headed south toward Dover. Only they decided to stop at Smyrna.

“There’s a very big net that we like to throw up on Route 1,” Forsythe jokes.

They dropped in at the Drunk’n Baker, the year-old downtown bakery and coffee shop, where co-owner Janet Straughn Forrest extolled the virtues of the rapidly growing town that straddles Duck Creek, the Kent-New Castle county boundary. She ended the chat with an offer to put Forsythe in touch with the mayor.

Masten called Forsythe, invited her back and gave her a guided tour of the town. Forsythe was sold. The new business, called That Performance Place, is opening in a temporary site downtown and, by the end of the year, expects to be offering music and theater lessons to preteens and teens in the former Thomas England House, a long-closed restaurant on Route 13.

“I spent a day taking them around town. We’re excited that they’re coming,” Masten says.
“I’m pleased to be working with people who put community and children first,” Forsythe says.

Forrest, whom Forsythe calls “my new best friend,” isn’t bashful about promoting the town either. She grew up in nearby Townsend, then spent the last 25 years or so in southern New Jersey, where her late husband was a police officer. Following her husband’s death, she wanted to move back home, and her daughter, Breanne Blair, was looking for work as a pastry chef.

Investing in the Town

They came upon a renovated building at the corner of Main and Commerce streets, decided it was an ideal location, and instantly received a warm reception for the alcohol-infused pastries that are the house specialty.

“I’m investing in the town, I’m investing in my daughter, and the shop gives me something to apply my time to,” Forrest says.

Owners of other businesses in Smyrna express similar sentiments—and that helps explain how the town is expected to triple its turn-of-the-century population of 5,679 by 2020 and how an area first settled in 1716 is becoming a popular dining and entertainment destination, drawing visitors from Wilmington and Bethany.

“You can find industrial space anywhere, but it was a really neat opportunity to locate downtown,” says Mike Rasmussen, co-owner of the Painted Stave Distillery, housed in the former Smyrna Theater on Commerce Street.

Hugg, Masten and other town officials persuaded Rasmussen and his partner, Ron Gomes, to consider locating in Smyrna and, Rasmussen says, “really rolled out the red carpet for us,” even throwing a party so they could meet other business owners and residents.

Painted Stave’s opening in late 2013 launched an alcoholic-beverage-making boomlet, with Ron Price opening Blue Earl Brewing last year in the Smyrna Business Park and the Brick Works Brewing and Eats brewpub, a partnership between Kevin Reading of Abbott’s Grill and Eric Williams of Mispillion River Brewing, both in Milford, almost ready to open on Route 13.

Smyrna’s resurgence started slowly, beginning in 2003 when Joe and Shirley Sheridan decided to sell their pub in Ogletown and head south. They came to Smyrna looking to buy a house, Shirley says, “and then I saw a big For Sale sign in the window of a building that had been a bar or a liquor store for about 100 years.” The location was good, the price was right, and Sheridan’s Irish Pub soon became a popular gathering place in town.

Focus on Dining, Entertainment

“When we first moved here, there wasn’t much of anything,” she says, but “people with vision, people who have the means to take a chance” are remaking the town.

The first stages of the revitalization have focused on dining and entertainment. Howard Johnson opened the Odd Fellows Café three years ago, then sold it after a year-and-half when Masten approached him about another project. He formed a partnership with Smyrna businesswoman Donna Ignasz and, with the help of some economic development incentives made available by the town from a $300,000 U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, opened the Inn at Duck Creek last December in an 18th-century building at the corner of East Commerce and North Main streets.

“We say it’s the perfect spot,” says Johnson. The restaurant features upscale dining with a farm-to-table approach, beverages from Delaware brewers, distilleries and wineries, and live music on Friday and Saturday nights.

To give the entertainment vibe more momentum, the town has enlisted Strongpoint Marketing and Wilmington-based Gable Music Ventures to produce events like Smyrna at Night 2016, set for June 10. The program will feature 25 performers at 12 locations around town, with four indoor and outdoor stages at the Smyrna Opera House, two stages each at Painted Stave, Sheridan’s and the Inn at Duck Creek, and Blue Earl running a beer garden in the center of town. Children’s activities, vendors and food trucks will round out the program, says Gable Music’s Gayle Dillman.

With about a dozen bands, the event drew about 2,000 last year, Dillman says. This year, with good weather, a crowd of 3,000 to 4,000 is possible.

“It’ll be mostly American, rock, country, singer-songwriters; nothing too edgy,” Dillman says. “We’re helping Smyrna establish itself as an entertainment destination. From Wilmington, it’s an easier drive than to Center City Philadelphia.”

While dining and entertainment may be Smyrna’s meal ticket to prosperity, there’s near-unanimous agreement that there’s much more to be done, especially in re-establishing a retail core downtown.

“You can have a drink at Painted Stave and a dinner at Sheridan’s, but you can’t walk downtown to get a loaf of bread and a newspaper,” Hugg laments.

Need for More Retail

Yes, there is some retail—Sayers Jewelers and Gemologists has been around since 1950, and Smyrna Sporting Goods, known to the locals as “the gun shop,” for nearly as long. And there’s a hardware store too.

“We need fresh new businesses in town. Same old, same old doesn’t cut it for me,” Masten says.

She would like to see more boutiques, “like a miniature Berlin, Maryland,” she says, as well as a mid-sized department store that would cater to shoppers at a broad range of income levels.

While she’s a strong supporter of locally-owned businesses, Masten believes that “we will need some chains and, when one company comes, another will follow.”

The poster child for the hoped-for retail resurgence, Hugg says, is Karen Gill, owner of the adjoining Smyrna Cards and Gifts and Royal Treatments home décor shops.

After running a home-based window treatment business for years, Gill opened Royal Treatments on South Main Street in October 2013. The business took off rapidly, and Gill’s husband, Woody, joined the operation fulltime in June 2014. Four months later, they rented the space next door and opened the gift shop.

“Smyrna is really hopping right now. There’s a lot of excitement and enthusiasm for being downtown,” Gill says. “People who have lived here all their lives are surprised at what’s going on.”

Sheridan, whose pub weathered the economic downturn eight years ago and came back strong, can see the progress. “We’re a step further along than we were. You can see that there’s pride in downtown again,” she says.

Winning with Cross-Promotions

Forrest, of the Drunk’n Baker, would like to see Smyrna evolve into an “artsy, eclectic community like Asheville, North Carolina.” She sees much potential in the town’s “mix of the old and the new” and has been impressed with the way retailers and restaurateurs work together to cross-promote each other’s businesses.

“When you partner with others, everyone wins,” Sheridan adds.

“When I was elected mayor three years ago, I wanted to reinvigorate downtown, but I had no idea how to do it,” Masten says.

“I am not a shy person. I am going to push and push to get it done,” she says, explaining how she quickly built collaborative relationships with residents, business owners and members of the town council. “I have a wonderful team on the council. We work as a team, we play as a team, and we communicate,” she says.

By 2014 the town had approved a new strategic plan, and is working aggressively to implement it. It had also created a redevelopment authority, a semiprivate spinoff from the town, with five directors who have business and finance experience, and gave it the power to make loans and grants to small businesses.

“We recognize the importance and value of the downtown core,” Hugg says. “We’re not going to sit back and wait. We’re going to make things happen.”

Some of Smyrna’s initiatives resemble initiatives under way for nearly a decade on Wilmington’s Market Street.

The town has funneled $50,000 or so a year in penalties assessed against owners of vacant properties into grants to help store owners improve their facades, Hugg says. The $300,000 federal grant serves as a sort of revolving fund; initial loans jumpstart redevelopment projects and loan repayments are used to get new projects up and running.

Rick Ferrell, a Wilmington-based consultant, helps identify businesses that would be a good fit downtown and offers helpful advice.

“Our approach is to work with property owners to find a way to say ‘yes,’ not to say ‘no,’” Hugg says. “It’s more than saying ‘Smyrna is open for business.’ We’re committing the town to being ‘business-ready.’”

As a longtime Smyrna resident, Masten has made revitalizing the town her personal mission. “I’m having fun doing it. It’s not work yet,” she says. “It’s the lowest-paying job in the world and the best group of people to work with.”

Smyrna’s population has nearly doubled since the year 2000, reaching an estimated 11,170 in 2014. The state predicts that the number of residents will reach 18,000 to 20,000 by 2020.

“We will probably meet or exceed that. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing, but it will come whether we want it or not,” Masten says.

“We talk to a lot of young couples who come into the distillery,” Rasmussen says. “This is a more affordable place to buy a house and it certainly doesn’t hurt that there are neat things going on in town to attract them.”

Much of the actual and projected increase, Masten says, has been from the development of 55-plus communities that have attracted retirees (and soon-to-be retirees) from higher-tax states like Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Hugg says approvals granted before the housing crash in 2008 authorized construction on about 2,000 lots. Permits will have to be reactivated before any work begins.

In addition, he says, many downtown buildings have second-floor apartments, and some of them are currently vacant.

Happy Being No. Five

While the town’s population is growing, Smyrna has no interest in catching up to Wilmington, Dover, Newark or even Middletown.

“We don’t have any desire to be Delaware’s second- or third-largest town. We’re comfortable being number five,” Hugg says.

While no one is chanting “We’re number five” (around Smyrna High School, it’s more appropriate to shout “We’re number one” in recognition of its state championship football team) many residents are quite happy with where they are.

The Sheridans enjoy walking to work, having bought a home across the street from the pub.

While Painted Stave was under construction, Rasmussen and his wife looked around and bought an old house downtown. “We’re two blocks from just about everything. In the morning, we walk to the Drunk’n Baker for bagels and cupcakes. On Sunday afternoon, we can walk to Sheridan’s porch for dinner. A couple nights ago we walked down the street and had a nice dinner at the Inn at Duck Creek,” he says.

Walkable, friendly, inexpensive, accessible, filled with entertainment options and the promise of more retail—it’s a combination that’s making Smyrna an increasingly popular place to call home.

“I just love it,” Masten says. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”

OUR TOWN SERIES: This is the second in a series of profiles about communities throughout Delaware

Its population has already tripled in this century

Some folks think Middletown got its name because it’s roughly halfway between Wilmington and Dover. Wrong.

The real story behind the name is that Middletown is about halfway between Bohemia Landing on the Chesapeake Bay and Cantwell’s Bridge, east of Odessa. Nineteenth-century farmers from Maryland’s Eastern Shore would drive their carts, laden with fruits and vegetables, to the river port, from which their produce could be shipped north to Wilmington and Philadelphia or south to ports on the East Coast.

Ask a contemporary resident or shop owner about their community’s name, and they just might tell you it’s because Middletown is, figuratively and sometimes literally, right in the middle of everything.

After all, what better way is there to explain how a town could more than triple its population in 13 years—from 6,290 at the turn of the century to 19,910 in 2014. And there’s no sign of the population boom slowing down. With multiple new subdivisions approved by town officials but not yet built, it’s easy to anticipate a population of 25,000 or so within 10 years, Mayor Ken Branner says.

It’s a boomtown with a small town feel, a Main Street reminiscent of Mayberry flanked by strip mall shopping and big box stores, with McMansions, townhomes and apartments sprouting where peach orchards thrived more than a century ago.

“There’s a lot of opportunity here,” says Dawn Graney, a Middletown native who owns A Creative Edge, a graphics and design shop that’s been on Main Street for four years. “It’s a growing town. It’s exciting.”

Patrick D’Amico feels the same way. He moved to Middletown 16 years ago, after he and his wife decided they could get more house and more land for their money than they could in Hockessin. D’Amico, a veteran chef who has worked in the Wilmington area at Harry’s Savoy Grill, Eclipse and the Hotel du Pont, recently took advantage of an opportunity to end his commuting days and bring more fine dining to Middletown.

Over the winter he and his business partners, Rick Clark and Adam Cofield, opened the Metro Pub in a renovated lumber showroom in Peachtree Station, a block north of Main Street. While the gastropub has quickly become a go-to dining destination in town, D’Amico and partners have more on their plates. By the end of the summer they expect to open an Italian restaurant that he says will be “a step up from the gastropub” in the historic Middletown bank building on the square at Broad and Main. The tentative name: Cucina della Banca, which means “the kitchen of the bank.”

“Many people down here tend to travel north for work. Then they come home and they have to go north again to go out for dinner,” D’Amico says. “We want to give them a good reason to stay here when they go out.”

Although surrounded by growth, the venerable Main Street business district refuses to be squeezed by it.

Much of it has to do with having a variety of specialty retailers downtown.

“We’ve got a frame shop. You can’t get [custom framing] at Walmart,” Branner says. And, for many people, he adds, “it’s easier to get a couple of screws or a box of nails at Middletown Hardware than to drive out to Lowe’s or Home Depot.”

“Collective Creativity”

More than that, says Nick Manerchia, executive director of Middletown Main Street, the nonprofit responsible for downtown revitalization, it’s the “collective creativity” and passion of merchants who are committed to working together. Besides such regular events as trick or treating on Main Street at Halloween and a Christmas parade, merchants organize two fashion shows a year and, on May 14, they’re sponsoring a Grapes and Grains event in the Metro Pub parking lot—all the wine and beer you can drink for $45 a person.

“Our events are successful because they’re based on ideas that come from the merchants,” Manerchia says.

In April, to promote a Grease singalong at the Everett Theatre, downtown’s long-standing entertainment hub, a group of retailers assembled outside the theater at lunch hour and did the hand jive to promote the event. “It was fun, and we got a couple of beeps” from passing motorists, says Elizabeth Barbato, owner of the Purple Sage boutique, a Main Street fixture for 11 years.

Barbato has some unique ideas of her own, too. She has learned that special events draw extra traffic, so she offers a free tea tasting on the first Saturday of the month—eight varieties plus a special coffee, and she brings in a tea leaf reader as well.

The Everett has tried to develop a consistent menu of events to build its audience, says Chris Everett, the theater’s executive director. The first weekend of the month usually features a film as a joint fundraiser for the theater and a local nonprofit organization. For the second and third weekends, there’s a stage production—Disney’s Alice in Wonderland Junior in May and Shrek the Musical in June—and occasional special events on the fourth weekend. (A Billy Joel tribute band performed in April.)

“We’re trying to make this a destination place, but it takes a while,” says Everett, who calls it “just a happy coincidence” that his surname is a perfect match for the theater.

Adjacent to the Everett is its annex, where theater classes and rehearsals are held, and the “Gibby Center”—the Gilbert W. Perry Center for the Arts—which offers art exhibitions, classes and camps.

“I’m glad we’re here,” Everett says. “What we do helps bring people downtown to the businesses, and what the businesses do helps make their customers more aware of the theater.”

While it’s reasonable to assume that the Main Street shops would rely primarily on local residents for patronage, shop owners say their customers come from both near and far.

Barbato says her tea tastings at Purple Sage regularly attract visitors from Chestertown, Md. Tammy Nichols, general manager of Half-Baked Patisserie, says she has regulars who drive from the New York metropolitan area for their cannoli and Italian cream cakes and rum cakes.

Traffic Congestion a Plus?

Shop owners admit they can thank traffic congestion for bringing them some of those out-of-town customers. Main Street is notorious for half-hour traffic jams in the morning and mid-afternoon and often on weekends, and those jams worsen when travelers to and from Maryland’s Eastern Shore pass through Main Street on their way to or from Route 1 and points north and south – much as those Eastern Shore farmers passed through Middletown in the years before the C&D Canal.

“I could be anywhere,” says Graney, the graphic designer at A Creative Edge, “but people stuck in traffic see the name of the business on the front of the building.”

“The merchants sometimes complain about the traffic,” Branner says, “but people stop in traffic and they say, ‘There’s Purple Sage, there’s Charlie’s Barber Shop, there’s Immediato’s Bistro.’ You can look around and see what’s there, and sometimes they pull into the parking lot and stop.”

The mixed blessing the congestion brings may soon become a thing of the past. Construction began early this year on the Route 301 bypass, a toll road that will stretch from the Maryland state line to Route 1 north of Middletown. The bypass, while intended primarily to get heavy trucks off Route 896 on their way to and from Interstate 95, will also reduce the number of long-distance travelers through Middletown.

But the bypass will have little impact on local traffic, especially with about 3,000 more housing units approved for construction and at least 17 more retail and restaurant businesses coming to town.

Most of the new construction is on Middletown’s south and west sides, where the sprawling Westown Shopping Center includes stores like Kohl’s, Michaels, Marshalls, Dress Barn, Petco and Walmart.

“We’ve got Grotto pizza, Chipotle Grill, Panda Express, all kinds of commercial 5,000-to-10,000-square-foot buildings on the way,” Branner says.

The Westown Movies, with 12 screens, opened in December 2013 and in February 2015 became the first movie theater in the state to receive a license to serve alcoholic beverages. The theater attracts more than 300,000 moviegoers a year, says Rick Roman, owner of Roman Theatre Management.

Although it’s on the outskirts of town, the cinema respects the town’s heritage with a 65-by-17-foot mural in its lobby featuring images of Main Street, the Everett, the annual peach festival and the town logo. Its refreshment stand features “Middletown treats,” pizza and baked goods prepared by local merchants. The theater regularly opens one of its screens to local charities, showing classic films as fundraisers, with a $5 admission, Roman says.

New Employers

While the massive Amazon.com distribution center dominates the west side of town, and contributes to traffic jams during its shift changes, it’s hardly Middletown’s only big—or new—employer. Johnson Controls, the auto battery maker, is working on a $55 million expansion, adding 200 jobs to its plant on North Broad Street. A Harley-Davidson showroom and restaurant is on its way and the town is negotiating with two manufacturers for new sites.

In addition, the town has approved, over protests by a group of residents, construction of the Middletown Technology Center, a 228,000-square-foot data center for companies to store massive amounts of electronic information, in an industrial area called MOT Park, near the Amazon warehouse. The data center would be powered by a 52.5 megawatt natural gas cogeneration plant. Construction of the $500 million facility would take about 10 months, Branner says, but cannot start until the state Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control issues required air quality permits.

The project would create 2,000 or more short-term construction jobs, and eventually 125 fulltime jobs, at salaries ranging from $75,000 to $125,000, Branner says.

Not all of Middletown’s growth is associated with big companies and national brands.
The Middletown Area Chamber of Commerce has grown from 165 members to more than 500 in five years, says Roxane Ferguson, its executive director. The chamber has created a Business Incubator and Collaborative Workspace within its new building on Cass Street, and it already houses 18 businesses, which pay anywhere from $150 a month for a cubicle to $500 for a private office. (Drop-in charges are lower.)

“It has helped tremendously,” says Kevin Flanagan, who runs his eight-employee Delaware Computer Mechanics business from an office at the incubator. “The mentoring, the workshops on putting your business together, meeting potential clients . . . you don’t get that running a business out of your home, and if you’re in a store, you’re often in there by yourself,” he says.

With all the growth, it can be a challenge to preserve the town’s heritage, says Don Matsen, president of the Middletown Historical Society.

“It seems kind of strange that people who move into new houses come down here because it’s agricultural and it has its rural aspects, and they’re the ones who are making it impossible to see that,” he says.

But he refuses to pin the blame on developers. “Middletown is extremely flat. It’s easy to build houses on flat land. Developers don’t put money in their expense accounts to preserve properties. It’s human nature,” he says.

Parts of the downtown area, especially on Broad and Cass streets, have large, colorful Victorian homes dating to the 1830s and 1840s, and a few even older, Matsen says.
But many others are long gone.

Attendees at a recent historical society meeting compared an 1868 map of the town, which had the locations of all the homes marked, with the current streetscape. Matsen says the group went through the map with a red pencil, crossing out homes that no longer existed. “When we were finished,” he says, “the paper looked like a school teacher’s correction of a poor student’s exam. There were Xs all over.”

Matsen, who lives just outside of town in a house built in the 1790s, admits that old homes aren’t for everyone. “They require continuing maintenance. It would be cheaper to live in a more modern house, but we love the history of it, and the architecture,” he says.

While the peach orchards are now part of the distant past, Middletown recalls its heritage on the third Saturday in August, when the Historical Society puts on the annual Peach Festival. With a parade, 350 vendors and entertainment inside the Everett and on three outdoor stages, the event usually attracts about 30,000 people. “It seems like it’s always the hottest day of the year and we pretty much shut everything [else in town] down,” says Brian Richards, who organizes the program for the society.

Then there is the Big Ball Marathon over Labor Day weekend, a 24-hour softball celebration that has been raising funds to support community organizations for nearly 20 years.

Next to the Peach Festival and the Big Ball Marathon, Middletown’s best-known special event may be the Hummers Parade, a loosely organized New Year’s Day celebration for which residents create floats and dress in costume to spoof political and cultural icons.
Also on this year’s amusement schedule will be a quirky chamber of commerce-sponsored competition: teams of beanbag pitchers will square off on Oct. 8 in the State Corn Hole Championship.

Events like these along with a thriving Main Street and expanding retail and employment options help explain why Middletown has become so popular.

“We’re a half-hour commute into Wilmington or down to Dover, and over the bridge into New Jersey isn’t a big deal,” Ferguson says. “And look what you get here: a beautiful home, a big yard and good schools for your children.”

The coworking space joins downtown’s growing reputation as a hub for business technology

Housed in a former DuPont Co. office building and bearing a name and logo saluting the legacy of that iconic gunpowder and chemicals manufacturer, Wilmington’s newest coworking space aims to become the first home for “the next generation of Delaware businesses.”

Dover-born Robert Herrera officially opens The Mill, on the fourth floor of the Nemours Building at 10th and Tatnall streets, on April 1.

The Mill joins the coIN Loft at 605 N. Market St. and 1313 Innovation in Hercules Plaza at 13th and Market. Herrera insists there is a place for all three as the first office space for startups and freelancers who hope to catch the initial entrepreneurial wave in a downtown that seems to be repurposing itself into a hub for small business technology.

Coworking hubs represent the future, “the newest type of space,” says Wilmington real estate consultant David J. Wilk. “Traditional office space is no longer worth the cost unless you’re a corporate user who needs to sardine everyone into place.”

Visitors entering The Mill via the elevator will face a reception area that features a television screen that can be programmed with a welcome message from clients using its conference rooms and a series of shelves that will display patent models from the Hagley Museum’s collection. Conference rooms, a kitchen and a library line the broad main hallway that acts as the spine of the operation. In the middle of the hallway, Herrera has installed a custom-made 28-foot-long table made from American chestnut, a species rendered virtually extinct by blight in the first half of the 20th century. The tabletop, fashioned from wood recovered from a mill in Pennsylvania, will be outfitted with electrical and internet connections for 18 users.

A kegerator and ping pong

The kitchen area will include a full bar, complete with a kegerator, and enough room for a catering crew, adding to The Mill’s appeal as a venue for after-hours tech meetups.

Participants in the Challenge Program, which trains at-risk youth in construction skills, are building four tables for the conference rooms. The tables will also give The Mill’s tenants a chance to unwind, Herrera says, “because they’re conveniently designed to ping-pong table dimensions.”

(At press time, Herrera was hoping Gov. Jack Markell, a notoriously competitive ping pong player, would display his skills at The Mill’s grand opening ceremony.)

With a row of nine glass-walled and windowed offices along its west side (each one equipped with customized Bluetooth speakers concealed in the ceiling tiles), The Mill offers more privacy than coIN Loft, where most users work on tables and desks in an open central area or sink into plush sofas or chairs before firing up their laptops. And, unlike 1313 Innovation, The Mill won’t be promoting itself primarily as a destination for tech-oriented startups.

“Coworking is growing all over the country, and the successful ones don’t focus on any one type of business,” Herrera says. While he would like to have a small law firm set up shop at The Mill, “the market will dictate the types of businesses we get,” he says.

Even so, with credit card banks and corporate law firms now the dominant players in the city’s business scene, Herrera sees significant growth potential here for startups that focus on technology to support the financial and legal sectors.

Monthly fees: $45-$1,200

The founders of Counsl, an Austin, Texas, startup that fits that description, visited Delaware in late January to pitch a mobile app that streamlines the incorporation process. After meeting with key law firms, Markell and other state officials, they expressed their intention to move to Wilmington, and they met with Herrera to discuss leasing office space at The Mill.

Monthly fees at The Mill range from $45 for table-access only to $350 for an individual private office and $1,200 for an office that can accommodate up to four desks and chairs. The Mill will have space for about 55 users, Herrera says. As of early February, five of the nine private offices had been reserved.

All users will have access to the facility’s conference rooms, for fees ranging from free to $30, depending on membership level and demand.

Herrera, 30, studied architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and worked at two architectural firms in New York City, where he helped to design several coworking spaces.

“As a Delaware native, I’m happy to come back and do something here with what I’ve learned,” he says.

True to his own coworking roots, Herrera says he spends some time almost every day at the coIN Loft, and he has hired two small businesses housed there, First Ascent Design and The Barn, to build his website and develop his branding materials. “Everyone at the coIN Loft is my friend,” he says.

“Robert does everything right,” says Mona Parikh, managing director of Start It Up Delaware at the coIN Loft and community engagement liaison for the University of Delaware’s Horn Program in Entrepreneurship.

The Mill, she says, “will be the most sophisticated, provide the most resources, the most support and more high-end amenities” of any of the area’s coworking spaces.

“If a company or startup team is at a point where $1,200 per month for truly amazing office space is viable, The Mill is where they belong,” she says. “The other price points for desk rental are great as well, but the offices are going to be the true gems.”

“The Mill embraces a totally new lifestyle for businesses,” Herrera says. “This is our community. We’re trying to bring people together.”