Friday, February 14, 2025

Podcast Jan. 11 – Let’s talk about expensive Wilmington projects, real and ‘theoretical’

We kick off this week talking about River Place, the city’s public-private mixed-use project in downtown Wilmington.

The taxpayer-funded part of the project consists of 168 parking spots. The average cost of building a parking deck with that number of spots would be between $3 million and $5 million — so how did it end up costing over $25 million?

Further, what lessons can be learned from this as the city — and New Hanover County — eye future public-private ventures in the future.

Next up, the latest on the Galleria project and proposed Wrightsville Avenue improvements between Military Cutoff and Eastwood roads.

The city of Wilmington spent about $20,000 to create a conceptual design and cost estimate for the improvements and then showed the report to city council… where one council member called it ‘madness’ and another essentially asked why they were looking at a ‘theoretical’ project for which neither that state or Wilmington has the money.

We end this week with a trip to Kure Beach, a sleepy little beach town that may finally be considering making some changes to the way things have been.

If you missed any of these stories, you can catch up below:

Related Articles