Mainscape

About Mainscape

At four in the morning the business corridors off Market Street are quiet enough to hear the pines dripping, and that is the hour this work happens. Mainscape clears commercial ground when a freeze settles on Wilmington — plowing parking lots and drive aisles, opening sidewalks and building entrances, salting the ramps and crosswalk cuts where a fall would happen first. Coastal snow comes heavy and on a schedule nobody controls, so the plan is made ahead and crews stage before the first flake. The aim is that the eight o'clock arrivals never learn how close the day came to closing. An empty lot, plowed and gritted under the light poles, is a good-looking thing at dawn.