It was nearly 22 years ago when singer/songwriter Dar Williams first found herself in downtown Wilmington, preparing for a show at The Grand.

Back then, Market Street was a pedestrian mall in the area, cut off from traffic. Broken-down building facades greeted visitors by day with roll-down security gates covering shuttered storefronts at night.

The LOMA revitalization had not yet occurred and the Riverfront redevelopment was just getting started.

Fast-forward to one of Williams' more recent Wilmington returns — her 2012 show at The Queen with indie folk duo The Milk Carton Kids — and she found herself marveling at what she found, especially at the Riverfront.

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With her two children in tow, ages 8 and 3, Williams and Milk Carton Kids guitarist/singer Joey Ryan walked down to the Christina River. The foursome ate lunch at Harry's Seafood Grill, checked out Thomas Burke's Andrew Wyeth-inspired birdhouses that line the Riverwalk and played at the Delaware Children's Museum.

Williams saw firsthand what a waterfront can do for a city — even if that city still had plenty of work still to do.

The result of that fascination is a 22-page chapter all about Wilmington and its Riverfront in Williams' newly-released book, "What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician's Guide to Rebuilding America's Communities — One Coffee Shop, Dog Run and Open-Mike Night at a Time" ($27, Basic Books).

The in-depth examination of Wilmington's push to revitalize its Riverfront and downtown will be the centerpiece of Williams' concert/book reading at Arden's Gild Hall (2126 The Highway) Oct. 12 at 8 p.m. (Tickets for the show, $30, are expected to sell out.)

Williams will also lead a question-and-answer session with fans about the past and future of Wilmington.

Her love of urban planning grew out of her time touring the country, driving from town to town as a musician and noting changes after each visit.

"I realized I was basically a field worker for 20 years because I was watching how towns are coming up," Williams told The News Journal during a recent interview to preview her Arden tour stop.

Before Michael Purzycki was sworn in to become the 56th mayor of Wilmington, he headed the public/private Riverfront Development Corporation group, established by the General Assembly in 1995 to transform the forgotten wasteland into a cultural and recreational hub.

That made Purzycki a good interview subject for Williams, whose 288-page book also details urban planning successes in other towns that she has visited with her folk music, including nearby Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Williams ended up meeting with the not-yet-mayor, impressing Purzycki with both her passion for livable space and knowledge of Wilmington's slow march toward making downtown and the Riverfront a desirable place to live.

"I had no idea who she was, but heard she was interested," Purzycki remembers. "She just came and I found myself so charmed by her authenticity. She's priceless."

The two talked about how the Riverfront has grown from a place to avoid to a magnet for all types of people: families bouncing at the Altitude Trampoline Park, young professionals gulping at Constitution Yards Beer Garden and fitness nuts lifting at CrossFit RiverFront.

In a city that she once believed had a "piñata problem" — great corporate wealth all around with little of that same affluence on the ground level — Williams now saw the names of the multi-national companies like DuPont and Bank of America as corporate sponsors of this new public space, which is open to all.

"I realized that I had completely changed my impression of Wilmington from a piñata city to a city that welcomes people from all walks of life, with all they have to offer," Williams writes. "Thanks to Riverfront Wilmington, and some parts of the city growing around it, the city now has a stronger claim that it is growing in prosperity for all, not just a small segment of its population that holds the moneybags."

At the same time, Williams was aware that not all city-dwellers feel the same. During last year's mayoral race, some who live in neighborhoods plagued by shootings and crime complained that they had been forgotten while needed resources went to the Riverfront and downtown revitalization instead.

While the long-simmering resentment remains for some, Purzycki says he's working to make the city better for all, pointing to a new detailed survey all Wilmington residents have been asked to take.

The community-driven effort is called "Wilmington 2028" and it's intended to help guide the city's development over the next decade, asking about everything from quality of life issues like safety and sense of community to affordability, entertainment and dining.

"We need to make people feel like they are invested in the city. We have people who, I think, feel they have been alienated from the rest of the prosperity in the city for too long," Purzycki says. "Getting them involved is the only way this is going to succeed."

Williams has seen it work in other cities and says she has hope for Wilmington: "The neighborhoods are all beautiful and they can all come up. And when they do, by the way, they do. People will point to these neighborhoods as success stories."

For his part, Purzycki learned something from Williams, as well: she's a damn good singer and songwriter.

Before she left, Williams gave him a copy of her most recent album, 2015's "Emerald." A couple of years later, it's still in his car where it continues to spin in his CD player.

"I"m going to go see her if I can and the deal is this," Purzycki proposes. "She's going to have to play 'Slippery Slope' for me because I just love this song."

While Williams uses Wilmington to make her case that waterfronts are a great use of public space, she's less bullish on the city's efforts to reinvigorate downtown. And that's even after getting a tour of the home and violin shop of David Bromberg, the well-known musician who was lured from Chicago to Market Street in 2002 with economic incentives.

During her most recent visits to the city, the ghosts of previous visits remain in the financial district: empty sidewalks at night, closed businesses and little to no nightlife spilling into the streets. Sure, it's better than it was years ago, but the progress has not matched the Riverfront's revival.

"It feels empty, but there's still an opportunity to put something in there so there's a day purpose and a night purpose," says Williams, 50, of New York. "I'm always cheerleading for more life in the financial district even though the buildings do very well on their own for the economy during the day."

In addition to Purzycki, Williams also interviewed Villanova University's David Fiorenza for her book.

The economics instructor, who teaches a class on Wilmington's revitalization, bumped into Williams as a WXPN fundraiser in Philadelphia and heard her talking about urban renewal.

Soon, they were chatting each other up. Not long after, Williams was sitting in on his urban economic classes and picking his brain about his case studies. By the time she was done, she had made yet another new fan.

"When we first met, I thought it was just the alcohol talking between her and I — the bourbon she had and the beers that I had. But, no, she really had a passion for revitalizing cities," Fiorenza says. "And it's not a quick process. It took a generation for these cities to crumble and it's going to take a generation for them to revitalize fully and she understands that."

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Dar Williams performance, reading and Q&A

WHEN: Thursday, October 12, 8 p.m.

WHERE: Gild Hall, 2126 The Highway, Arden

COST: $30

TICKETS: ardenconcerts.com