NEWARK — The Buccini/Pollin Group celebrated yet another start to an apartment complex with a groundbreaking ceremony – this time on the University of Delaware STAR Campus.
The Wilmington developers are building two seven-story apartment buildings with upscale amenities including a pool, pickleball court, dog run, indoor basketball half-court and fitness center complete with cardio and boxing equipment. Site work started two weeks ago on an empty lot just north of the Chemours Discovery Hub.
Between the two buildings, BPG plans to bring 229 market-rate units by 2026. The project, first identified by the Delaware Business Times in 2022, was first proposed to have retail on the ground floor, but ultimately was scrapped because of space constraints on the property.
Reflecting on the site’s past as a former Chrysler Plant, BPG Co-Founder Chris Buccini said during Thursday’s groundbreaking ceremony that he planned to turn the project as “the hood ornament” of the STAR Campus.
“What has happened here in the last 15 years is just beyond extraordinary and we’re the front door to it. . . really, there’s a lot of trust that went into having BPG here,” he said.
BPG spent years building hundreds of apartment units in downtown Wilmington and, due to recent deals with Apennine Development and Pettinaro Companies, it now manages more than 6,000 apartment units across the state. But this project also represents a new market for BPG – a thriving college community and research and development hub.
Buccini pointed out the firm also built the UD bookstore on East Main Street as one of its first projects and later built Bloom Energy on the STAR Campus. His grandfather and father had the contract to service HVAC units on the campus for years. But he also thought this project has the potential to open new possibilities for the STAR Campus as a true live-work concept.
The apartment complex would sit feet away from some of the top research hubs on UD, as well as private companies like the Kendal Corp., Predictive Analytics Group and ILC Dover. It also anchors the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals, or NIIMBL. The latest addition to the STAR Campus was the FinTech Innovation Hub.
“I think what we see in most college campuses around the country now is that the walls come down and because of the economic impact they’ve always had on the communities,” Buccini told DBT. “It’s really meant to be this whole integration of the university and its surroundings. This is one of the most dynamic employment areas in the state, with W.L. Gore, JPMorgan and more. I always say you need more of everything.”
He also looks at the train station on the STAR Campus as an opportunity for commuters to use Amtrak that may attract professors, administrators, financiers and even nurses and doctors from ChristianaCare.
Buccini alluded to challenges, such as small lot size and working with “an institution that thinks in centuries,” as well as nailing down a design that UD and BPG would be proud of for years to come. He added that it’s becoming a difficult construction environment with the tariffs starting to become a reality and inflation persisting on steel, lumber and other materials.
Outgoing UD President Dennis Assanis, who spoke in one of the first events since he announced he would be departing from the university by the end of June, was impressed by how far the STAR Campus had come. When he and his wife first drove past it in 2015, he said there was a low-rise health services building that was the former Chrysler administration building.
Looking across the STAR Campus with four buildings that now span 1.2 million square feet and employ 3,000 people, he is proud of his place in a transformational time at Delaware’s largest university.
Assanis told reporters that he felt it was time to step aside as he had been studying for advanced degrees, teaching and later holding leadership roles in higher education for 31 years with little to no time off. When his tenure ends, he plans to spend the summer in Greece with family and be a more active grandfather.
“This is another moment of pride,” Assanis said, referring to the apartment complex. “Projects like this are years in the making. I would call this another big step that helps us realize our shared vision to have a learning community, which brings so much innovation and great ideas to the state.”
“When I first got here, people had all these ideas, but nobody was really thinking about how to anchor a park truly around research and discovery,” he continued. “So, I’m pretty proud. Typically, history is written 10, 15 years later when people say, ‘Wow, people had the foresight to do this.’”
