The News Journal
By Adam Taylor
Cornerstone West, a nonprofit housing agency, Thursday celebrated its 10-year anniversary of work in Wilmington with a tour of the recently renovated Clayton Court Apartments at Fifth and DuPont streets.
Residents of the 72-unit complex will return next month when the finishing touches are completed on the $14 million renovation. Most of the money came from tax credits, government grants and low-interest loans from banks.
Cornerstone — the housing arm of West End Neighborhood House, a community center that recently celebrated its 125th anniversary — has done $30 million in housing projects on the city’s west side in the past decade. West End partnered with St. Francis Hospital in 1999 to create Cornerstone.
“The west side has been a model community for revitalization because of the quality of the residents’ commitment and hundreds of partners willing to work on all aspects of revitalizing the community,” Cornerstone Director Joan Fultz said.
In all, Cornerstone has completely renovated and sold more than 80 homes on the west side and made facade and other smaller improvements to nearly 100 others.
Gov. Jack Markell and Wilmington Mayor James M. Baker attended Thursday’s ceremony, which also included the groundbreaking for The Pavilion, a project that consists of 10 new town houses across the street from Clayton Court. The first few Pavilion units will be completed in about six months, Molly Keresztury, Cornerstone’s assistant development director, said.
Property Values have increased on the blocks in which Cornerstone has done its work, and the projects have fostered development by others on the blocks as well, West End Neighborhood House Executive Director Paul Calistro said.
Cornerstone also built Speakman Place, a 71-home mixed-income community in northeast Wilmington. The last two homes at Speakman were sold recently, about two years after the first residents moved in.