Why Should Delaware Care?
There are more than a thousand vacant properties in Wilmington, including the 19th-century Gibraltar estate that for years sat crumbling in the upscale Highlands neighborhood after redevelopment plans fell through. Now, a debate is happening over the city’s purchase and ongoing renovation of the 6-acre property that is using millions of public dollars.
A Wilmington mansion that was once crumbling and hidden behind overgrown foliage has quietly turned into an expensive public preservation project after a city redevelopment entity spent more than $2.3 million in taxpayer money over the past year and a half to purchase and then repair the historic estate.
Another half-million in appropriated public dollars is next to be spent, and the team behind the project, including former-Mayor Mike Purzycki, say even more will be needed from private donors to fully renovate the estate, called Gibraltar.
In recent weeks, the spending has sparked criticism from city council members who have argued that the project has not been sufficiently transparent, and that the millions of dollars committed to it could have been better spent in neighborhoods struggling with poverty and crime.
The Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land Bank purchased the 6-acre Gibraltar estate in the upscale Highlands neighborhood for $1.25 million in December of 2023 at the direction of Purzycki, who was serving as mayor at that time.
Purzycki’s own home sits right next to the property.
The Land Bank, as it’s known, is a taxpayer-funded entity that the Wilmington city council formed in 2015 with a goal of purchasing and then renovating “vacant, dilapidated, abandoned, and delinquent properties back to productive use,” according to its website.
In a city press release published after the sale, Purzycki said the purchase would “make the property available for the enjoyment of the public for generations to come.”
Left unsaid in the statement were details about what any planned uses of the 181-year-old mansion might be.
But, in a letter to neighbors sent in 2022, Purzycki suggested the mansion itself could “remain zoned as residential,” and that a garage on the estate be rezoned for commercial use, such as a restaurant or what he called “limited retail.”
Since leaving office and becoming a private citizen in January, Purzycki has continued to have an “unofficial” role in the publicly funded property renovation, he said in an email sent last month to Spotlight Delaware.
Asked what the property will ultimately become, Purzycki said there were no specific plans other than the restoration, which claimed “should be sufficient to warrant public and foundation support.”
He also said the project needs ongoing fundraising in order to “make a significant improvement to the property.”
To date, city money has been used to replace roofs on the Gibraltar mansion, as well as stabilize walls, clear the grounds, and perform cosmetic restorations, such as replacing broken windows.
City Council’s critique
The status of the estate and its involvement with the city’s Land Bank has raised concerns among Wilmington City Council members and local residents.
Councilwoman Shané Darby sponsored a resolution last month asking the Land Bank to hold a public hearing that would hold the organization “accountable for transferring over a property without letting city council know.”
During the council meeting, Darby accused Purzycki and Land Bank officials of operating through a “backdoor deal” — suggesting the former mayor’s true motivation was to “clean up” his own neighborhood.
Purzycki denies the allegations.
He also said that critics of the renovation “should look back at the photos of the neglected and vandalized mansion from just two years ago.”
Ultimately, the city council adopted Darby’s resolution, and Land Bank officials have since scheduled a public meeting to discuss the status and future of the estate.
Get Involved
The Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land Bank is hosting a public meeting on the acquisition and rehabilitation of the historic Gibraltar Mansion. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 7, at the Delaware Art Museum (2301 Kentmere Parkway, Wilmington, DE 19806).
A month before passing Darby’s resolution, the city council’s Community Development and Urban Planning Committee heard testimony about the latest operations at the Land Bank from Bud Freel, a former city councilman who took over as executive director of the Land Bank in February. Prior to that, he served as a consultant to the entity, whose previous executive director was Ray Saccomandi.
During the committee meeting, council members, including Darby, Coby Owens, Trippi Congo and Christian Willauer — who previously served as the Land Bank’s executive director — raised concerns about a what they described as lack of transparency, citing the Land Bank’s failure to update its property inventory, financial reports, and website.
Their website’s annual report and property inventory list have since been updated.
At the meeting, the council members also voiced concerns with the Land Bank’s involvement with Gibraltar.
Darby claimed that Purzycki made the initial purchase from an entity called the Gibraltar Preservation Group “behind closed doors.”
Owens questioned why the public’s dollars were spent on the estate when the Land Bank’s typical work involves renovating or building homes that are affordable to working class Wilmington.
He further called the decision to rebuild Gibraltar “a mishap in the mismanagement of a failed administration who’s no longer in power.”
“I’m saying this money could have been used to actually help the neighborhoods that are seeing gun violence, the neighborhood that has crime outside of these blighted properties,” Owens said.
In 2023, the News Journal reported that there are more than 1,400 vacant properties across Wilmington, of which Gibraltar is one.
Also expressing frustrations at the committee meeting were residents from the Highlands neighborhood, including Maggie Messinger who said she and neighbors had sent open records requests to every government entity involved in the Gibraltar project, “and no one, not one person, can tell us what the plan is.”
“This community deserves better,” she said.
Despite the criticisms, both Freel and Purzycki say that having Gibraltar in the Land Bank’s inventory of homes fits with the organization’s mission.
Freel also asserted that the Land Bank has not contributed any resources or dollars from its own account toward the upkeep of the mansion.
“The work is done, they present us with an invoice, we run it through the city, make sure everything’s good, and then the city provides us the money. And we go ahead and pay the invoice, and that’s the whole process,” he told Spotlight Delaware.
According to work receipts obtained by Spotlight Delaware, the renovation work has largely been carried out by the 9th Street Development Company – which is led by a team of prominent city business leaders, including Robert Herrera, who founded The Mill coworking space, and Robert Snowberger, an entrepreneur and former executive at the Buccini/Pollin Group.
Darby told Spotlight Delaware that the Land Bank is not supposed to be what she called “a holding station for developers and for past mayors to do later development.”
Additionally, she said her resolution to ask the Land Bank to hold a public hearing is not just about the estate, but more about holding the entity accountable.
The long history
The core of Gibraltar’s original structure was first developed in 1844 by John Rodney Brincklé, grandnephew of Caesar Rodney, Delaware’s fourth governor.
In 1909, the large rectangular home was purchased by Hugh Rodney Sharp and his wife Isabella Mathieu du Pont. Sharp was a close friend and advisor to Pierre S. du Pont, who led the DuPont company during the early 20th Century.
Sharp was also instrumental in expanding the University of Delaware and being one of its biggest benefactors, according to a UD website.
After his purchase, Sharp expanded the home into its present, 6-acre estate, which includes the stone mansion, pool house, garage, service building and garden among other structures.
The estate is also notable for its Marian Coffin Garden, designed by Marian Cruger Coffin, one of the first American women landscape architects.
Sharp’s son, Hugh Rodney Sharp Jr., eventually inherited the property. Seven years after his death in 1990, a nonprofit conservation organization called Preservation Delaware purchased the estate using a $1-million grant from the state, according to court records.
The estate was then placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, making it eligible for preservation incentives, such as tax credits and federal grants. In addition, a conservation easement was placed on Gibraltar, which restricted the use of the property to preserve its historical features.
The estate started to deteriorate even before it left the Sharp family’s possession, and up until recent years, it suffered multiple incidents of vandalism, break-ins and squatting.
The space was even used by Wilmington Police as a K-9 training site and as a music video set shot by film director M. Night Shyamalan.
In the years following its purchase, Preservation Delaware claimed to face financial hardships in trying to restore the mansion and attempted to partner with developers who sought to convert it into different uses, such as a bed and breakfast, boutique hotel, office space, townhouses, and medical facilities, among others.
But locals were opposed to those development plans and filed a lawsuit in response to the city of Wilmington’s zoning board that granted a variance for such projects.
In 2009, the lawsuit was appealed to the Delaware Supreme Court, which ruled that the variance was appropriate. Still, development plans continued to stall due to money problems and Preservation Delaware’s inability to get past an existing conservation easement.
In 2010, Preservation Delaware sold the estate for $10 to the Gibraltar Preservation Group, a limited liability company owned by developers Drake Cattermole and David Carpenter.
Despite the sale, Preservation Delaware kept ownership of the adjacent gardens, which they continue to manage while the space stays open for the public. Today, the president of Preservation Delaware’s Board of Directors is New Castle County councilmember Dee Durham.
In recent years, residents again advocated for the estate to be better maintained and not developed for a commercial use.
In a letter sent to state lawmakers in 2021, they accused Cattermole and Carpenter of purposely allowing Gibraltar to deteriorate for years beyond repair, so they could demolish and redevelop the site.
Before acquiring the estate, Purzycki said he backed nearly every proposal to redevelop the mansion for commercial use, despite living nearby. And he said that community opposition played a role in the mansion’s deterioration.
“In recent years after a sincere effort by a developer to find common ground once again failed, I decided that the only way forward for this historic property was to get it in the right hands for its preservation,” he said.
In December 2023, Purzycki finalized a sale agreement to use $900,000 from the city’s budget to acquire the Gibraltar estate from the Gibraltar Preservation Group.
The written agreement between the group and the city also required Wilmington to transfer a 9,030-square-foot piece of land that sits next to the mansion on Greenhill and Brinckle avenues.
Wilmington had six months to make the transfer, according to Purzycki, but the city council ultimately voted against it, which resulted in the city paying an additional $350,000 from the state bond bill to the sellers.
Now that Purzycki is a private citizen after leaving office in January, he said his role in the rehabilitation of Gibraltar is unofficial but that he “confers” with Freel and Rick Gessner, a board member of the Land Bank, with suggestions for moving forward on the site.
As of April 14, more than $2.3 million has been spent on stabilization work, including clearing the grounds, repairing the roofs, stone walls, the driveways, windows and shutters.
Financial records from the Land Bank show that just over $500,000 remains for the property.
Liz Allen, who manages the Marian Coffin Gardens on behalf of Preservation Delaware, said the high costs of the restoration likely come from contractors using materials that mimic the mansion’s existing architecture.
Since Gibraltar is on the National Register of Historic Places, those working on its rehabilitation must abide by the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Treatment of Historic Properties, which ensure that any new work is compatible with the existing property’s historic character, in order to retain its tax credits.
“It’s a huge improvement. It’s not like an eyesore and a hazard anymore,” Allen said.
Purzycki says there have been discussions with Preservation Delaware to combine the mansion and gardens to create a foundation, but no agreement has been made.
He asserts that the current plan only involves stabilizing the site, focusing primarily on the first floor interior and some of its exterior. In addition, any future plans for the estate will require broad public input.
Continuing to stabilize the property to sufficient points will require more funds, however, it is unclear where Purzycki and developers will acquire the dollars from.
“I have often stated that as we improve the property, Gibraltar will tell us what it wants to be. In any case, any change in use will require neighborhood consensus,” Purzycki said in an email.