Two of the New Castle County’s oldest suburbs could finally be getting a new start.
The Eastern Brandywine Hundred communities of Edgemoor and Overlook Colony were honored Friday after a year of coordinated planning as part of the Blueprint Communities program.
The program, sponsored by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh, coordinated training sessions throughout the year and paired community leaders with professional planners to help them formulate a “blueprint” for their future.
Nine Delaware communities presented their final plans to a panel of judges Friday at the University of Delaware, with Edgemoor and Overlook being chosen as the number one and two plans, respectively.
Now the communities are awaiting their share of seed money from the bank – from a pool of $100,000 – that can be used for engineering, planning and perhaps most importantly to leverage funds from other sources.
Edgemoor, for example, is in the final stages of establishing a non-profit arm to raise funds. The community has already secured a $250,000 21st Century Grant from the federal government that will help pay for after school programs at the Edgemoor Community Center. It also expects $160,000 in Community Development Block Grants it will use to rehabilitate a home for a community resource center, according to Cheri Whitney, who led Edgemoor’s Blueprint effort.
“They really helped put us on a path toward accomplishment,” Whitney said. “We learned that just throwing money at a community doesn’t fix it if that community is not organized and if there’s no understanding of the population that lives there.”
A major focus in both communities will be home ownership, with property owners simply more likely to buy into the future of a given neighborhood than renters might be.
In Overlook Colony, that effort starts with identifying homes that can be rehabbed using grant monies, and then sold, said team leader Brett Saddler. Saddler said he also hopes the clout that comes with Overlook’s Blueprint selection can be parlayed into an increased police and code enforcement presence there.
But most important, Saddler said, are the long-term relationships forged within the community.
“The year-long commitment the team made to the Blueprint Communities process has brought us together and strengthened our determination to see the Overlook Colony/Clearfield Village revitalization through,” he said. “The team, made up mostly of residents and business stakeholders, learned that to be successful in making the neighborhood a better place, a multi-year process was involved.”
Councilman John Cartier (D-Penny Hill), who lives between the two communities and represents both, was proud of their work and enthusiastic about their future.
“These communities did not become distressed overnight and they will not recover overnight, but this is a huge milestone,” he said. “Now we have the organization in place, we’ll have some seed money and we’ll be able to leverage that and move forward.”
