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As the Port of Wilmington celebrates its centennial anniversary, Joe Cruise, CEO, GT USA Wilmington, also applauds the Delaware seaport’s recent success and plans for vast future expansion.

In a written response to questions from the American Journal of Transportation, Cruise noted Feb. 14 that the growth achieved by the Port of Wilmington in 2022 has continued into 2023. GT USA Wilmington (GTW), which operates the port, “is confident of continuing the successes of last year. 2022 turned out to be a very successful year for The Port of Wilmington. Revenue showed a 19% increase while cargo tonnage throughput increased by 24% over 2021.”

Edgemoor Site Terminal Construction

This year, GT USA will commence construction of a new state of the art common user container terminal with a capacity of 600,000 TEUs. Construction is on the “Edgemoor” site, immediately upstream from Wilmington’s position on the Delaware River. This is scheduled to open in 2025. GT USA will utilize a rubber tired gantry yard configuration that will be seamlessly integrated to maximize operational efficiency and feature a new state-of-the-art refrigerated warehouse. Expansion of the facility and equipment will eventually increase volume capacity to 1.2 million TEUs.

As to the 100th year since the port opened its gates and commenced cargo operations, Cruise observes that it’s not only volumes that have enormously escalated. “It is also interesting to note the changes in the types of cargo coming through the port. Early cargoes consisted of lumber, wood pulp, quebracho logs, cork, jute, burlap, lead, ilmenite ore, fertilizer, and petroleum products. Lumber and petroleum products still feature significantly, but now fresh fruits dominate.”

For inbound ships arriving from Delaware Bay, the Port of Wilmington is the first major port on the Delaware River and not only a key port of entry but distribution center for year-round cargo of bananas and pineapples, seasonal importation of fresh Moroccan citrus and Chilean grapes, along with other fruits and juices from around the globe. Cruise notes that the port boasts a one-million square foot on-dock warehouse complex and is one of North America’s largest facilities that serves as a refrigerated distribution hub for the United States and Canada.

South American fresh produce continues to be a mainstay at Wilmington, with grapes, peaches, plums, cherries, avocados and citrus from Chile, apples and pears from Argentina, fruit concentrate from Brazil, grapes and citrus from Peru and bananas from Colombia and Ecuador. Cruise indicates that continuing the fruit season through the summer months remains a priority for GT USA Wilmington. This began during the 2022 summer with several vessels and hope to grow this business during 2023.

Beyond fresh produce, the port handles diverse cargoes, including containers, dry and refrigerated breakbulk and dry and liquid bulk; salt, petcoke, grains, new and used vehicles and heavy equipment, live cattle, space components, wind blades, and much more. Forest products are a fast expanding cargo for the Port of Wilmington. Lumber, in particular, has had a strong start to the year, with the Port receiving three vessels in January alone.

“Many ports are still dealing with congestion issues, but the improvements we have made at the Port of Wilmington are allowing us to continue our planned growth,” said Cruise. “This is such a diverse port, with great facilities, new equipment and with the cargo handling expertise of our ILA partners, we will continue to seize upon opportunities to attract new business,” Cruise indicated to AJOT.

“We continue to work hard with the assistance of all our partners to fulfill the potential of this great Port. The infrastructure improvements that have been made in recent years are helping us to provide increased services to all our customers, as well as to attract new customers, and we will continue building on those improvements. “We have a hard-working work force that is quite flexible and, with the upgrades to the forklift fleet, yard truck fleet, and all electric RTGs they are even more productive,” said Joe Cruise. “GT USA Wilmington aims to pay a fitting tribute to everything the Port of Wilmington has achieved throughout its 100 years.”

Celebratory events are being planned for later in the year and details of these will be released shortly.

When the Port of Wilmington first opened in 1923, it stood on 105 acres. Now it occupies 308 acres. Initially, its warehouse storage was 120,000 square feet. As mentioned above, that figure now exceeds one million. Wilmington’s original berthing area of 1,210 feet is now over 4,500 feet. According to Cruise, in the terminal’s first year it handled 17,000 tons of cargo and today the port handles over six million tons.

Partnerships with these countries go back a long way in Wilmington’s history and they remain strong to this day. In early February, Cruise attended a breakfast at the Chilean Ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC to commemorate 200 years of diplomatic relations between our countries and the Argentinian Minister for Trade visited the Port to reaffirm the relationship with the Port of Wilmington.

Research about Interstate 495 has inspired a veteran writer to craft a novel about Delaware in the Roaring ’20s, featuring F. Scott Fitzgerald, ghost-hunting and a few du Ponts.

“I was just fascinated to find out about it,” William Francis Albensi, who writes under the name of William Francis, said of the literary lion’s two-year stint in Delaware.

Albensi’s 10th book is “Ellerslie,” named for the Edgemoor mansion that Fitzgerald and wife Zelda rented, suggested by Wilmington lawyer John Briggs, Fitzgerald’s Princeton roommate.

“I came here to get away from the noise of New York so that I could write,” Albsensi writes in creating a speech for Fitzgerald. “I also came here because I have a fascination with medieval Europe and feudalism. I wanted to study the DuPonts and their quasi-feudalism over this area and create a novel loosely based on them.”

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“Ellerslie” also exposes Fitzgerald’s self-deprecating outlook, his insecurity that his best was already behind him and the hard partying that led to his untimely death at age 40.

“Look at all these drunk and pathetic faces just staggering through life with little purpose,” Albensi writes in fictional dialogue for Fitzgerald that ends the first chapter. “But they could say the same thing about me. I’m a source of amusement.”

William Francis Albensi

Albensi, who grew up in the Newark area, now lives in Pennsylvania, a stone’s throw from Delaware, and works as a Citibank tax analyst. The research was for one of his Arcadia Publishing photo history books, on Interstate 95, with a chapter on I-495.

Ellerslie was built in the 1800s and demolished in 1972. It lives on in the name of a road east of the Edgemoor exit of I-495 and south of Fox Point State Park.

Albensi was stymied in his hope to explore the mansion’s fenced-off riverfront site, later a DuPont Co. plant that was demolished in 2015. But his Delaware knowledge shows in things like P.S. du Pont and his campaign to build schools, the creation of Wilmington’s Rodney Square and Charles Lindbergh’s desire for a plane built in New Castle.

The novel is set in an era when bucolic northern New Castle County drew city slickers by train to mansions like Ellerslie or The Patio (now Archmere Academy) or the artsy Arden.

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A review on the publisher’s website call it a “fast-paced, intensely spooky ghost story,” going from the era’s “glitz and glamour to the seamier underbelly.”

The heroine is April Ross, the University of Delaware’s first female history student, asked to write a history of the mansion but really asked to find out who’s haunting it.

Albensi doesn’t want to live in that era, he said, citing less advanced health care, violence associated with Prohibition and the exploitation of industrial workers. “You can fantasize, but it’s better to live in your own time,” he explained.

That said, history continues to draw him in. He’s researching Edgar Allan Poe’s connections to Delaware. Poe definitely gave a lecture in Newark on Dec. 23, 1843, but he has yet to find any evidence that he wrote “The Raven” while in Delaware.

Like all states, Delawareans' average incomes vary greatly across cities and towns.

Data from the U.S. Census' five-year American Community Survey Median shows that median incomes in 2021 in Delaware ranged from roughly $34,615 to $158,036 across the state.

Statewide, the median income was about $72,724, with 8.5% of residents earning more than $200,000 annually.

Of the 50 wealthiest communities, the majority were located in New Castle County, followed by Sussex and then Kent County. Here is the complete list of towns, ranked by the census' estimated median annual income.

The top 50 richest towns in Delaware

50. Newark

County: New Castle Median household income: $61,646 Percent making more than $200,000: 7.3%

49. Wyoming

County: Kent Median household income: $61,765 Percent making more than $200,000: 2%

48. Magnolia

County: Kent Median household income: $62,500 Percent making more than $200,000: 0%

47. Edgemoor

County: New Castle Median household income: $67,841 Percent making more than $200,000: 1.5%

46. Harrington

County: Kent Median household income: $62,639 Percent making more than $200,000: 0.4%

45. Brookside

County: New Castle Median household income: $62,810 Percent making more than $200,000: 4.5%

44. Greenwood

County: Sussex Median household income: $63,717 Percent making more than $200,000: 0.6%

43. Smyrna

Counties: Kent and New Castle Median household income: $63,794 Percent making more than $200,000: 2.2%

42. Wilmington Manor

County: New Castle Median household income: $64,767 Percent making more than $200,000: 2.9%

41. Camden

County: Kent Median household income: $65,023 Percent making more than $200,000: 7.3%

40. Delaware City

County: New Castle Median household income: $65,625 Percent making more than $200,000: 2.4%

39. Ardentown

County: New Castle Median household income: $65,625 Percent making more than $200,000: 10.8%

38. Elsmere

County: New Castle Median household income: $66,833 Percent making more than $200,000: 5.5%

37. Edgemoor

County: New Castle Median household income: $67,841 Percent making more than $200,000: 1.5%

36. Newport

County: New Castle Median household income: $68,036 Percent making more than $200,000: 0.3%

35. Woodside

County: Kent Median household income: $68,750 Percent making more than $200,000: 0%

34. Arden

County: New Castle Median household income: $69,338 Percent making more than $200,000: 7.6%

33. Frankford

County: Sussex Median household income: $71,667 Percent making more than $200,000: 4.7%

32. Rising Sun-Lebanon

County: Kent Median household income: $73,241 Percent making more than $200,000: 8.9%

31. Riverview

County: Kent Median household income: $77,083 Percent making more than $200,000: 3.2%

30. Pike Creek Valley

County: New Castle Median household income: $77,402 Percent making more than $200,000: 6.7%

29. Selbyville

County: Sussex Median household income: $77,974 Percent making more than $200,000: 2.5%

28. Lewes

County: Sussex Median household income: $78,125 Percent making more than $200,000: 16.5%

27. Bellefonte

County: New Castle Median household income: $78,155 Percent making more than $200,000: 3.3%

26. Bear

County: New Castle Median household income: $79,981 Percent making more than $200,000: 6.7%

25. Ocean View

County: Sussex Median household income: $80,225 Percent making more than $200,000: 9.7%

24. Bethel

County: Sussex Median household income: $81,818 Percent making more than $200,000: 1.9%

23. Viola

County: Kent Median household income: $83,036 Percent making more than $200,000: 0%

22. New Castle

County: New Castle Median household income: $83,651 Percent making more than $200,000: 7.6%

21. Millville

County: Sussex Median household income: $85,221 Percent making more than $200,000: 10.2%

20. Houston

County: Kent Median household income: $87,708 Percent making more than $200,000: 1.9%

19. Odessa

County: New Castle Median household income: $88,750 Percent making more than $200,000: 3.8%

18. Clayton

County: Kent Median household income: $91,346 Percent making more than $200,000: 0.9%

17. Middletown

County: New Castle Median household income: $93,750 Percent making more than $200,000: 9.5%

16. Highland Acres

County: Kent Median household income: $96,131 Percent making more than $200,000: 8.8%

15. Glasgow

County: New Castle Median household income: $96,954 Percent making more than $200,000: 9.5%

14. South Bethany

County: Sussex Median household income: $99,063 Percent making more than $200,000: 14.6%

13. Dewey Beach

County: Sussex Median household income: $102,188 Percent making more than $200,000: 19.8%

12. Bethany Beach

County: Sussex Median household income: $102,279 Percent making more than $200,000: 19.5%

11. Fenwick Island

County: Sussex Median household income: $108,750 Percent making more than $200,000: 27.9%

10. Ardencroft

County: New Castle Median household income: $110,132 Percent making more than $200,000: 10%

9. Greenville

County: New Castle Median household income: $118,618 Percent making more than $200,000: 30.4%

8. St. Georges

County: New Castle Median household income: $129,125 Percent making more than $200,000: 26.5%

7. Hartly

County: Kent Median household income: $130,653 Percent making more than $200,000: 0%

6. Pike Creek

County: New Castle Median household income: $131,603 Percent making more than $200,000: 21.3%

5. Rehoboth Beach

County: Sussex Median household income: $137,783 Percent making more than $200,000: 30.5%

4. Henlopen Acres

County: Sussex Median household income: $141,875 Percent making more than $200,000: 40.4%

3. Townsend

County: New Castle Median household income: $142,115 Percent making more than $200,000: 38%

2. North Star

County: New Castle Median household income: $153,971 Percent making more than $200,000: 34%

1. Hockessin

County: New Castle Median household income: $158,036 Percent making more than $200,000: 38%

Send story tips or ideas to Hannah Edelman at [email protected]. For more reporting, follow them on Twitter at @h_edelman.

In the late 60s and early 70s, movie theaters, drive-ins, and strip mall cinemas were popping up all over the nation. They were the new craze. Branmar Cinema had just opened their doors, along with Tri State Mall’s old theater. And then came the Cine’Mart Theater on Governor Printz Boulevard in Wilmington, Delaware. The first date of the box office opening at the Cine’Mart was January 20th, 1969.

According to the credited research that Edwin Graf Diemer contributed to Cinema Treasures for this story, “The shopping center [across the street from Cine’Mart] was built just following World War II and quickly became the most popular shopping destination in Wilmington.” The theater seated 984 people and there was only 1 screen, similar to Branmar Theater just a couple miles away. A newspaper released at the time of the closure stated, “The CineMart, Northern Delaware’s largest motion picture theater was closed over the weekend. Employees of the 984-seat theater on the Governor Printz Boulevard said they were notified of the closing just hours before it was shut down.”

The theater was steadily losing “$50,000 to $60,000 a year” and fell behind on rent. The owners did ask the owners of the Merechandise Mart to twin the theater, but they declined. At the same time of the CineMart closure, the Edgemoor Theater, which was only a few hundred yards up the road, would close when their lease expired.

Edwin cited that “The auditorium was completely in gold with wide rocking chair seating. The front was deeply curved to allow for the screen, with curtains that went to the rear of the auditorium.” According to local WJBR listener, Gary Rauso who has been to the Cinemart as well as Branmar Cinema, stated “It was the first theater in the area to have surround sound.” This theater, along with many others across America, actually were booking shows ranging from G-rated to explicit pornographic films. The theater was originally built to operate solely on X-rated pornographic films, but the Budco company acquired the theater from Hallmark Theaters of Massachusetts and started showing all varieties of films. The first film ever shown at the Cinemart was in 1968, titled “The Odd Couple”. The last ever film shown there was “The Exterminator”.

The downfall of the Cine’Mart was actually due to the Concord Mall on Route 202 in Wilmington. The Mall had been built with a theater of its own and sucked the life out of the Cine’Mart. This also resulted in the abandonment of the entire Merchandise Mart. Today, the Cine’Mart is fully abandoned, but remains standing with boards up on every possible entrance.

For a more-in depth read of the history of the Cine’Mart, I highly recommend reading Edwin’s full contribution on Cinema Treasures.

GT USA Wilmington marked its fifth year of operation at the Port of Wilmington by citing record volume and a continuing commitment to building a container port at Edgemoor.

The report comes as a state representative and port board member cited concerns about a lack of transparency and a missed lease payment.

Through August 2022, tonnage and labor hours increased 41% and 15%, respectively, over the same period last year, a release stated.

(See map below for the location of the proposed container port)

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Joe Cruise, CEO said, “The last nine months have seen record volumes and employment at the Port. We are actively recruiting more employees to support our growing operations. I want to thank each employee for their hard work, dedication, and commitment to our customers. Our efforts continue to be devoted to providing excellent service to our current customers at the port, growing new business, and the development of Edgemoor.”

A release from GT reported that the board of directors of the Diamond State Port Corp. has been reconfigured. The board is now composed of three independent directors: Tim Pohl, Michael Sullivan and Mike Jackson. Pohl, who has been serving on the Board along with Sullivan, will serve as Chairman of the Board. Jackson is a former director of the Office for Management and Budget for the State of Delaware.

Securing the capital to develop Edgemoor is a central priority for GT USA. Edgemoor will expand capacity, create even more jobs, and highlight Wilmington as an economically attractive import and export hub, according to a release.

Click here for previous Delaware Business Now stories on the port

Pohl stated, “The board would like to highlight the excellent results achieved by the GTW team and union labor at the Port of Wilmington and we look to build upon their success. I am also excited to lead the forthcoming capital raising process to position the new port of Edgemoor for a bright future.”

Five years ago, GT USA signed a 50-year agreement to manage operations at the Port of Wilmington. This agreement marks Gulftainer’s second venture in the United States and follows the signing of a 35-year agreement with the Canaveral Port Authority in Florida.

The port, a leading importer of fruit and produce, has faced challenges that included the Covid pandemic, along with disputes over the sale of a cargo-handling firm and access to a fuel supplier.

There have also been concerns about the status of the Edgemoor site. The State of Delaware purchased the site from Chemours. A titanium processing plant at the site was razed.

A nearby roofing plant was closed and demolished, with the owner stating that it had no options to replace the obsolete facility since the state was reserving the Chemours site for the container port.

Community concerns have also surfaced. State Rep. Debra Heffernan, D-Brandywine Hundred, wrote a letter to Gov. John Carney and Secretary of State Jeff Bullock over a lack of community updates on the container port and the report of a missed lease payment by GT USA this year.

Delaware Online/New Journal, which has done extensive reporting on the issues facing the port with a free-lance investigative reporter, noted in story that Heffernan is a member of the Diamond State Port’s Board of Directors.

The letter also mentioned a report that ground could be broken on the container port late this year.

The port on the Delaware River would allow containers to be unloaded at a location convenient to Interstate 495 while shortening voyages to upriver cargo facilities in Philadelphia.

Upriver ports have claimed the Edgemoor port got favored treatment in receiving permits.

GT USA is owned by Gulftainer, an Emirates-baed port operator.

The Port of Wilmington is located on the Delaware and Christina rivers.

The port annually generates $436 million in business revenue, $409 million in personal income and $41 million in local taxes.

The port provides blue-collar jobs that have disappeared over the years in Delaware.