Stallion

Aerial view of Wilmington Wilmington corporation limit sign Looking east on West Main Street in Wilmington College Hall, the main building at Wilmington College In the early 1950s the city became home to a number of U.S. Department of Defense facilities, most notably the Clinton County Air Force Base. Following its closure in 1971, the economy of the city hovered in recession for more than a decade. After a number of small attempts to reuse the abandoned air force base, Airborne Express purchased the facility in 1979 for $850,000, a fraction of the estimated $100 million spent to construct it [ citation needed ]. During the next 24 years, Airborne invested more than $250 million to build a hub for its national delivery network, including new sort centers, a 9,000-foot (2,700 m) runway, aircraft hangars, machine shops, flight simulators, a state of art control tower, and a modern administration building to accommodate an estimated 6,000 employees and its fleet of 125 DC-8, DC-9 and Boeing 767 aircraft.