Christiana Mall continues to defy the odds. As shopping malls empty across the county, Christiana soldiers on at more than 90% occupancy, with tenants often lining up to get back into the mall.
This week, we reported on a host of new tenants coming to the mall in the second half of 2024. Alongside the long-awaited P.F. Chang's, these will include a couple very big names: Abercrombie & Fitch and Uniqlo, the latter of which making its Delaware entree.
More: Abercrombie, Uniqlo and other big names are coming to Christiana Mall this year
But what struck us during our interview with Brookfield Properties leasing director Bill King? Abercrombie & Fitch had apparently been waiting for a space to open back up at the mall. The store had converted its previous Christiana Mall space to surging subsidiary brand Hollister in 2022, as Abercrombie refreshed its flagship brand — and ever since, they'd been shopping for a space to put another Abercrombie in Christiana.
When Williams-Sonoma announced they would leave the mall in January, Abercrombie pounced almost immediately — and will be back in the mall by 2024.
This amounts to a photonegative of current shopping mall trends, where indoor shopping centers across the country struggle to plant tentpoles and anchors. Last year, the News Journal's Brandon Holveck examined what makes Christiana different. It's not just sales tax! That piece is still worth a read .
Other development news around the state includes what may be Delaware's first dedicated Nashville-style hot chicken restaurant . Wilmington's Trolley Square location of Grain will close its doors and come back as something else altogether , and Delaware home prices dipped slightly as the home-building boom increases inventory .
Oh, and all-night gamblers now have a second place to go in Delaware at 3 in the morning .
🍔A former Burger King in Newark will become an 80-apartment building
After a development saga spanning four years and multiple failed proposals, a former Newark Burger King looks like it will become a mixed-use, 80-apartment complex designed to house the city's ever growing population of student renters.
More: The big residential projects that will reshape Delaware in 2024 and beyond
The site will nonetheless generate less traffic than the former Burger King on the 1.33-acre site at South Chapel Street and Delaware Avenue, developer Lang Development Group told the city's planning commission in May.
On Monday, Newark City Council gave those plans its final stamp of approval, clearing the way for Lang to erect two five-story apartment towers, with 3,400 square feet of first-floor commercial space that will likely be split among several tenants.
Previous proposals by Lang had been stymied after community and council resistance to a seven-story building proposed on the site. Newark regulations now cap new developments at five stories, and design guidelines call for outdoor plazas — a feature that will also be included at the new mixed-use development.
Flashback to 2022: As apartment construction booms, Newark limits building height and changes parking requirements
Since 2019, the site has been a pay-for-use parking lot. The new plans call for 87 parking spaces in both underground and surface lots.
🥼Innovative water-harvesting company receives $1 million to locate in Delaware
"Atmospheric water harvesting" sounds a little like something they'd make up in a movie about colonizing Mars. Put simply, it means harvesting pure water from the air itself.
But that technology will soon be made in Delaware. A newly formed company called AirJoule LLC has announced it will build a breakthrough water-harvesting technology at a manufacturing site in Newark that will employ at least 60 people.
AirJoule is a 50-50 joint venture between massive GE spin-off GE Vernova Inc.. and a Montana-based company called Montana Technologies Corp. that developed the new technology in concert with a Department of Energy lab.
What's AirJoule's technology do? It attaches to existing commercial heating and cooling systems — which are responsible for 10% to 20% of energy use worldwide, depending whom you ask — to pull water from the air during air conditioning. In the process, the AirJoule technology will both reduce energy needs and produce clean water.
The Department of Energy hailed the creation of a viable commercial product from this technology, which relies on a special coating that desiccates the air, as a scientific breakthrough.
"In my 39 years of scientific discovery and innovation, I've only had scientific achievements like AirJoule happen a few times. The first time all the AirJoule components were integrated together as originally conceived earlier this year and seeing water pour out of the unit was extraordinarily gratifying and will one day be remembered, I believe, as an historical moment in scientific achievement," wrote Pete McGrail, Montana Technologies CTO and former DOE scientist, in a November 2023 press release announcing the technology.
AirJoule will lease a 30,000 square-foot site in the Newark area’s Delaware Industrial Park for its office and manufacturing, and devote $15 million to the buildout. A much smaller space in the The Innovation Space in Alapocas' DuPont Experimental Station, about 500 square feet, will be home to research and development.
After a grant application supported by the Delaware Prosperity Partnership, the Council on Development Finance provided AirJoule with a Jobs Performance Grant of up to $540,000 and a Capital Expenditure Grant of up to $460,650 from the Delaware Strategic Fund. Like all such grants, this $1 million in state money is conditional on AirJoule meeting certain conditions.
This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Newark will get 80 new apartments, plus 60 jobs creating water from air
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