Business View Civil & Municipal l November 2022

92 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 9 underway, Hugg suggests that all of the projects up to now have been disjointed. “Hopefully we are going to see a fairly detailed master plan for how we move forward, including rethinking a number of parcels downtown that are old, they’re not up to code, and they are sort of detractions from the downtown. If they were renovated or remodeled they would be destinations for people to shop and to eat, and what have you.” The Downtown Dover Partnership also owns several properties in the core, with a few of them being located in opportune areas for redevelopment. Part of the intention is to bring in more mixed-use development, something Hugg believes will benefit the area which is currently home to a lot of offices and professional buildings. “What we need to see downtown are some things that would attract particularly some of the younger workers. Entertainment venues, some good places to eat, and some boutique shops,” he explains. “The biggest challenge is we need to get people living downtown so that at five o’clock the streets don’t dry up and nothing happens till the next morning,” Hugg explains Mountain Consulting Inc., a minority and woman-owned engineering firm, is also investing in downtown Dover, moving its offices to the city’s main street. “They’ve been very successful downtown. They bought some properties, and they want to do a mixed-use DOVER , DELAWARE