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As the population growth ebbs and flows in Sussex County, construction companies like GGA Construction work to address new needs. | PHOTO COURTESY OF MEGHAN SHUPE/GGA CONSTRUCTION[/caption]
Sussex County is well-known as the fastest growing county in Delaware. For contractors, that means business is booming and constantly evolving.
Between 2018 and 2022, the lower county has grown by an average rate of 2.68%, starting at 230,048 residents in 2018 and growing to 256,447 in 2022, according to data from the United States Census Bureau.
Over the course of those five years, New Castle County’s population grew 0.67% on average while Kent County’s population grew by an average of 1.22%.
While there are more residents listed in New Castle County, coming in at 575,254 residents in 2022, Sussex County has steadily continued its legacy as the fastest growing county in the state.
Edward Capodanno, president of the Delaware chapter of Associated Builders and Contractors, said the extra residential growth seen in Sussex County in recent years only amplified the need for more and improved infrastructure of all kinds, changing the landscape of contracting services needed in the state’s most southern county.
“It looks completely different in Sussex County. There’s more people, way more housing developments, way more single family housing, some infrastructure improvements down there but that’s always been the question: Have we made the proper necessary infrastructure improvements? That’s probably debatable,” Capodanno told the Delaware Business Times.
More people, more permits
Infrastructure, he explained, is a broad, all-encompassing term that includes a variety of structures necessary to accommodate the residential and commercial growth such as roads, schools, courthouses, bridges, water and sewer systems and more.
Between 2018 and 2022, Sussex County’s issued building permits for residential units far exceeded the other two counties in the First State. According to the Development Trends Dashboard published online by Delaware’s Office of State Planning Coordination, the lower county saw 23,409 issued permits for residential use in those five years. In that same time period, Kent County and New Castle County saw 5,625 and 8,895, respectively.
The number of issued permits may correlate with the fact that Sussex County clocks in with the most land area compared to the other two counties. The lower county has 936 square miles of land area, according to the Census Bureau. Delaware’s central county, Kent County, comes in at 586 square miles while the northernmost county, New Castle County, is the smallest at 426 square miles of land area.
But not all of that land is available for development - Sussex County also has a significant amount of land in the state’s agricultural land preservation program.
Statewide, more than 150,000 acres, or 234.38 square miles, has been permanently preserved through the program with another 45,500 acres preserved in 10-year farmland preservation districts. Sussex County had more than 54,700 acres, or about 85.47 square miles, in the program as of 2021.
Capodanno says this still leaves a lot of room for expansions, residential builds, schools and other infrastructure-related construction to help accommodate the population growth.
“When it comes to construction, it’s a matter of finding the right fit and hopefully maintaining a balance when it comes to smart growth. The residential market down there is just flourishing,” Capodanno told DBT. “For us, that means more demands in institutional construction like schools to help take on the influx of people. It’s a domino effect down there. The question is: how long will it last and how do we add in affordable housing.”
More permits, more work
For Matthew Degli Obizzi of Ralph G. Degli Obizzi & Sons LLC, the increased growth meant a significant change in their commercial and mechanical contracting work. His Wilmington-based company offers HVAC and plumbing installation and has now started to pick up work in the south.
“We didn’t work downstate until about 15 to 20 years ago. We started with one job down there – the Georgetown prison,” he told DBT. “The amount of schools they’ve built in the past 10 years in Sussex County is crazy. That’s the driving force down there right now, the schools. It’s all in the infrastructure, but schools were the number one thing and health care followed. It’s about building the infrastructure to accommodate everybody coming down there.”
It's not just the amount of schools being built in the lower county that has changed, he added. It's also that these schools are larger.
“These aren’t small schools. Downstate schools seem to have bigger hallways and bigger classrooms. It’s really booming,” he said. “The schools they have down there today are not the schools we went to in our youth. It’s mind-boggling the amount of federal and state money that goes into these schools, which is good. They are state-of-the-art with monitors, televisions, touchscreens and they don’t skimp on the HVAC and electrical either. They’re not cutting corners on anything.”
Comparing Sussex County to work Ralph G. Degli Obizzi & Sons LLC does in New Castle is like night and day, he added.
“They don’t seem like they’re as sophisticated up here as they are down there and the schools are not as big up here because there are so many,” he said.
Delaware Contractors Association Executive Director Bryon Short said that many of the schools and other buildings across the state are getting older, as well.
“From a construction standpoint, that and the increased population means there are actual changes to the industry like modernizing HVAC because the controls are much more efficient and sophisticated, the quality of air in schools has changed for the better, we’re dealing with lead – all of those things are also being modernized,” he said.
Funded growth
While the dollars roll in for school growth from federal and state sources, as well as school-based property taxes, benefiting contractors like Degli Obizzi and their employees, Sussex County continues to lag behind its northern counterpart by not imposing a voluntary school assessment fees from residential developers.
The fee in question takes an average cost per student for a new school and multiplies it by the local school district’s share for major capital projects and 0.50, or the average number of children per household, according to the Delaware Department of Education. To initiate a request for funding through these fees, school districts must offer a school board approved expenditure plan to the state Department of Education.
In New Castle, these fees add anywhere from $6,800 to more than $11,800 per residential unit, or donated land from the developer to the district, to help shoulder the cost of school maintenance, construction and other growth-related needs. Fees are collected by the Department of Education at the time of development, but districts in New Castle County must offer a school board approved expenditure plan to the department prior to the release of that funding.
Sussex County Council had the opportunity to engage developers through these fees but refused to do so in February 2024. Prior to the ordinance denial, the Delaware Department of Education suggested that the average voluntary assessment fee for residential homes in the Cape Henlopen and Indian River School Districts could be more than $15,500 per home and as low as just over $7,500 per home in other areas.
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A construction worker on the site of one of GGA Construction's newest projects reviews the plans. The company has added several projects to its Sussex County lineup thanks to a booming population, including new Grotto Pizza locations, health care facilities and more. | PHOTO COURTESY OF MEGHAN SHUPE/GGA CONSTRUCTION[/caption]
Meanwhile, Degli Obizzi and Short say the funding will continue to flood into the schools somehow because the need will continue to grow.
According to the Delaware Department of Education 2024-2025 Capacity Report, every Sussex County based public school district is currently sitting at above 90% capacity. Woodbridge School District is currently at the worst capacity levels for the county sitting at 99% capacity, topped only by two other districts in the entire state, both in Kent County - Milford School District which is at 107% capacity and Polytech School District which sits at 100% capacity by design through applications.
Seaford School District touts 91% capacity, while Cape Henlopen and Delmar School Districts are at 92%, Indian River and Laurel School Districts are at 95% capacity and Sussex Tech School District is a close second to Woodbridge School District’s near capacity rate at 98%.
“You’re seeing significant infrastructure dollars at the state and federal level that have come into Delaware and that’s great. We’re building new schools, new courthouses, addressing deferred maintenance on buildings and even combining federal and state money for significant bridge upgrades. We definitely see a lot of that money going into the schools all over the state,” Short told DBT.
Industry growth
While contractors start seeing increased and changing work, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found only a slight increase in employees working in Delaware’s construction, mining and logging trades between 2018 and 2022 from roughly 22,300 employees to just over 23,500.
“We spent a couple of decades telling everybody that for them to be valuable, they needed to go to college and that was a detriment to our industry,” Short said. “Around 2017, the conversation started to change. We’ve also seen a real push to diversify the workforce more and we’re starting to see some progress with that. We have more women and more racial diversity across the workforce; it’s been a very real change.”
He argued, however, that construction companies continue to need more workers than there are students and entry-level employees preparing to get their feet wet in the industry. Technology may be one solution that is closing in on Delaware.
“There are a lot of great uses for technology in the construction industry right now, a lot of advanced technology, particularly drones and project management systems, that can help when it comes to a lack of workers,” he told DBT. “The workforce issue is very real and we have to be creative to find solutions while also encouraging our youth to seriously consider the trades.”
Despite the slight increase in workers in the industry, Lorri Grayson of GGA Construction agreed with Short and said that manpower is their biggest problem right now.
“There’s a ton of work out there, I’d say. There’s just not enough people. The funding is there, but we really haven’t seen a huge influx of workers. There’s not enough people in the construction field right now to service all of the projects going on,” she said.
GGA Construction, which has done a vast amount of renovation work at Milford Wellness Village which was formerly Bayhealth’s Milford Memorial Hospital, has seen such an increase in growth in Sussex County that the company opened offices in Milton and Rehoboth Beach, along with its main office in Middletown.
“And the crazy thing is that we’ve already outgrown those offices. There are more homes and people moving in with children, obviously that’s a huge strain on the school system. It’s also a strain on the health care system and other needs,” she said. “For example, Sussex County grew so much that it needed a mental health facility, so we built Sun Behavioral in Georgetown. Then, College Park grew there with the VA Clinic that we built, and Beebe’s health care clinic and the apartments we’re building right there are more affordable, too.”
GGA Construction is also heavily involved in the $60 million commercial redevelopments at Nylon Shopping Center in Seaford, as well as 15 to 20 other projects throughout Sussex County.
“We’re seeing a lot of hospitality and health care right now. A lot of it is centered around children playing in those sports activities like Sports at the Beach in Georgetown. The Tru by Hilton in Georgetown, for example, accommodates a lot of families involved in sports at that location and the same is true for the hotel near DE Turf in Kent County. Georgetown is really heating up, I’m excited about that. Seaford is really coming alive, as well,” Grayson told DBT.
It’s a sight many in the construction industry are happy to witness.
“We are busting at the seams down there. Which is good, I like to see that,” Grayson said. “We want to help make lower Delaware more beautiful by helping out with the construction in the community and adding value as it grows.”
