Big plans for Newark include library, hundreds of apartments, pickleball and more

The city of Newark, with its ever-expanding student population, has been busy reshaping the future of the city and its central business corridor.

This year, the city's development calendar has been filling in like a debutante's dance card. So far in 2024, this has meant multiple big mixed-use housing projects, new main street businesses, a swanky new library and a host of plans for The Grove at the former College Square shopping center on the east side of town.

It's getting hard to keep track of — and so we're tracking it for you. Here are some of the newly announced or approved projects coming for Newark this year.

More: The big residential projects that will reshape Delaware in 2024 and beyond

📚Newark Free Library plans approved

The heady plans for the new Newark Free Library are perhaps the biggest news that will shape the easterly gateway to Newark's central business district. In early July, Newark City officials approved ambitious new plans for the Newark Free Library, declaring the plans "wonderful" after a year of community meetings and feedback sessions.

Also shaping the council's enthusiasm may be the fact that the nearly $44 million estimated construction cost came almost entirely from state and county coffers, with the help of some private fundraising.

But the plans are also impressively ambitious. Designed by nationally lauded architecture firm Quinn Evans, the new library will be 50% bigger than the old one and encompass activities far beyond traditional hush-hush libraries, from dedicated zones for teens, to graft and game centers, to a 162-seat performance hall, not to mention plenty of outdoor space.

The new library will begin construction next year, and officially open its doors in late 2026.

See the plans: Check out Newark Free Library's new design, with performance space, game centers and more

For updates on what's getting built in Delaware, subscribe to our free What's Going There in Delaware newsletter . You can also join our Facebook group What's Going There in Delaware .

The Grove continues to fill in with fitness, bowling, Starbucks and pickleball

The massive Grove at Newark, the renovated College Square shopping center off Library Avenue, continues to fill in with stores, restaurants, plans and rumors.

At the site of a former Pep Boys, a location of ubiquitous coffee outlet Starbucks has opened next to breakfast chain First Watch, which opened in December. Local Mexican chain Del Pez has been delayed, but still plans to open this fall. Also planning to open this fall is Mediterranean spot Turkiye Kebab House.

Among the larger tenants, Crunch Fitness, a gym taking a portion of the former Sears Hardware, celebrated its grand opening on June 24.

Lefty's Alley and Eats , a popular bowling alley and family entertainment center in Lewes, will begin construction this year on a new location at the south end of the complex. It'll also be an ax-throwing venue, a host to live music, an arcade, a pub with brisket-loaded nachos and space for birthday parties.

Meanwhile, indoor pickleball venue The Picklr, whose special use permit was approved at the City Council this month, plans to be open in the first half of next year. Other businesses announced or rumored at the Grove include Philly-based '50s diner Nifty Fifty's, golf-simulator venue X-Golf, ice cream chain Coldstone Creamery and smoothie bar Smoothie King.

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 the site of a mixed-use, 80-apartment complex designed to house the city's ever-growing population of student renters.

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 July 22, the 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.

Even bigger mixed-use student housing underway on South Chapel Street

Catty-corner from the Lang project, the wrecking ball arrived in late July to make way for a six-story, 190-unit, 600-plus bedroom apartment complex at 65 S. Chapel St.

Tsionas Management, one of Newark's top developers, has begun knocking down multiple blocks of townhomes for an ambitious project called The Continental, complete with a 511-space internal parking garage shielded from view from the road.

The project is unapologetically huge, with a footprint of 85,759 square feet and gross floor area totaling 536,292 square feet. First proposed last year, The Continental underwent a few revisions before getting the final green light from Newark City Council on May 13 of this year. Tsionas, thereafter, wasted little time preparing the site for demolition.

Former Pat's Pizzeria on Main St. may also become apartments

Developer Tsionas has also proposed to demolish a longtime restaurant on South Main Street and construct a five-story apartment building in its place.

The apartment building would be the latest in a string of apartment and condominium projects on the former Elkton Road at the edge of the University of Delaware campus. The building would replace Pat's Pizzeria and Barley Whiskey Bar, which closed last year.

The proposal, first filed last September, also includes a two-story addition to the apartment building neighboring Pat's at 136 S. Main St., which is owned and operated by Tsionas.

Previous: Another Newark apartment building planned after Pat's Pizzeria near UD campus closes

So far, those plans have been buried in a sea of notes and revisions from the city's Subdivision Advisory Committee, and must still go before both the planning board and the city council before seeing the light of day.

But the most recent plans, as of June 22 of this year, call for a new five-story building at the site of Pat's with 40 two-bedroom apartments and 1,600 square feet of commercial space at the bottom.

The neighboring three-story building — whose bottom floor is home to a liquor, store, Mexican restaurant and tanning salon — would get an additional two stories of studio apartments.

Proposed 'stealth' Newark office building would mimic residential houses

Allura Bath and Kitchen , a Newark-area renovation firm, came before the city's planning commission with a proposal to put their new offices at the edge of the Windy Hills residential neighborhood at 515 Capitol Trail — where currently there's a single home on more than an acre of lawn and flood plain.

The mostly verdant residential-zoned plot sits next to houses on one side, and on the other next to a small professional complex.

And so Allura arrived at an interesting compromise, when coming before Newark's planning commission on June 4 – plans designed to accommodate the neighborhood's residential character while still allowing his company to expand into new offices to accommodate a growing staff for Allura's burgeoning business.

The offices would look just like houses.

Renderings show two 2,500-square-foot offices that look for all the world like side-by-side homes where families might live, decked out nostalgically with porticoed patios, arched-front windows and A-frame roofs.

Tucked behind the "homes" would be two big storage garages, totaling more than 8,000 square feet.

Anyway, the planning commission apparently was swayed, and recommended that the project be allowed to go through with minimal revisions . If the council agrees, which would require multiple variances, the offices for the place that renovates houses will look like houses.

2 Wawa stores may face each other across South College Avenue

Previously discarded plans for a new Wawa in Newark have returned in a much different form.

According to a special use permit application filed June 20 with the city of Newark, developers plan to build a 6,000-square-foot, stand-alone Wawa without gas pumps at the site of a former Boston Market at 1050 S. College Ave., just north of the I-95 interchange.

If plans for the new Wawa get the green light, College Avenue would likely end up with a Wawa store on each side of the street, reshaping Newark's I-95 interchange as essentially one big Wawa screensaver, with Wawa stores greeting both northbound and southbound traffic.

The planned Wawa on the east side of the road, with a store and 10 gas pumps in the former site of a Friendly's at 1115 College Ave, was approved after a raucous City Council meeting in January that reportedly extended past midnight, according to the Newark Post.

On the west side of the road, developers now hope to demolish the empty former Boston Market and replace it with a hefty 5,915-square-foot Wawa store. No drive-thru lanes are included in the plans, and neither is a gas station.

To make this happen, the store would need a variance from the city that includes a large Wawa sign, as well as smaller traffic islands and fewer shade trees on the parking lot than code currently permits. About 9,000 square feet of the lot would be open space, with about 1,400 square feet of wooded area.

More: Plans revived for a Newark Wawa. Where else is Wawa coming in Delaware?

Matthew Korfhage is business and development reporter in the Delaware region covering all things related to land and money: openings and closings, construction, and the many corporations that call the First State home. Send tips and insults to mkorfhage@gannett.com .

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Big plans for Newark include library, hundreds of apartments, pickleball and more