Why Should Delaware Care?
There are nearly 1,000 vacant properties in Wilmington, including the 19th-century Gibraltar estate that for years sat crumbling in the upscale Highlands neighborhood. For the past year, the public has debated the estate’s future and whether taxpayer money should have been involved in its renovation. The debate intensified after plans emerged to transfer the mansion to a new nonprofit company.
Wilmington has paused its plans to transfer the deed of a historic mansion, renovated with millions in taxpayer dollars, to a nonprofit led by the city’s former mayor.
In an email sent last week, Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land Bank Executive Director Bud Freel told residents who live near the Gibraltar Estate that his organization now wants to explore “all possible options” for the property. Freel later told Spotlight Delaware that the pause could leave open the possibility of the mansion going to still another entity.
The decision follows months of debate over how the Land Bank — Wilmington’s neighborhood redevelopment entity — should carry out its mission of renovating “vacant, dilapidated, abandoned, and delinquent properties back to productive use.”
It also comes three months after the Land Bank announced that it intended to transfer the historic mansion to Gibraltar Estate & Gardens Inc., a new nonprofit led by former Mayor Mike Purzycki.
While in office, Purzycki directed nearly $3 million in taxpayer dollars to rehabilitate the property. Purzycki’s own home sits next door to the mansion within Wilmington’s Highlands neighborhood.
In December, the Land Bank held a public listening session about the proposal to transfer the mansion to Purzycki’s nonprofit. More than 50 residents attended.
Some expressed gratitude to Purzycki for stabilizing the property and addressing years of decay left by its former owners. But others questioned what the final plan for the mansion would be, and raised concerns around the public’s ability to have a say over future plans.
Last week, Purzycki told Spotlight Delaware that his nonprofit does not have final plans for what Gibraltar would become if it were to acquire the estate.
“I’m certain people are still considering their view of what to do with it. But we haven’t had any information that would contribute to a sensible discussion at this point,” Purzycki said.
Freel said that after gathering community feedback at the December meeting, he and other Land Bank officials decided it was best to hold off on transferring the property.
Freel also made it clear that the Land Bank has no intention of keeping the mansion in its inventory, previously noting that the city-created entity does not have the ability to take care of the property.
City Councilwoman Shané Darby, who over the past year has criticized the Land Bank’s and Purzycki’s handling of the estate, said she is glad the city’s redevelopment entity decided to pause the transfer. She added that she will be keeping a “close eye” on the Land Bank’s next steps to ensure the property is not being turned over to Purzycki’s company without public notice.
Asked whether there would be efforts to try and push the transfer forward, Purzycki said he has not been focused on the matter.
City funding for Gibraltar sparks debate
Last May, Spotlight Delaware reported that the mansion – which in past years had sat in disrepair and hidden behind overgrown foliage – had quietly turned into an expensive public preservation project with nearly $3 million in taxpayer money appropriated for the Land Bank’s purchase and repair of the historic estate.
The spending sparked criticism then from city council members who argued the project had 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.
“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,” City Councilman Coby Owens said last March during a council meeting regarding the Land Bank’s dealings with Gibraltar.
The Wilmington City Council created the Land Bank in 2015 as a taxpayer-funded entity with a goal of purchasing and then renovating “vacant, dilapidated, abandoned, and delinquent properties back to productive use,” according to its website.
The Land Bank purchased the Gibraltar estate in 2023, while Purzycki served as Wilmington’s mayor.
Then, during a public meeting last October, the Land Bank’s board of directors announced its plans to transfer the mansion property to Purzycki’s nonprofit, Gibraltar Estate & Gardens Inc.
Though details about the mansion’s future plans were not known then, the Land Bank already had in its possession during the meeting a written agreement to transfer Gibraltar to the nonprofit.
The newly founded nonprofit aimed to reunite the mansion’s gardens, which sit adjacent to the sprawling estate and the mansion itself, placing them under one ownership.
The garden’s owner, a nonprofit called Preservation Delaware, previously owned the mansion but sold it in 2010.
New Castle County Councilwoman Dee Durham currently serves as the executive director of Preservation Delaware.
Also, during the October meeting, residents and city council members expressed concern about the proposal. Many said they found out just days earlier about the transfer and the new company.
“It’s literally a foundation with no information available on Google that was explicitly created for this purpose. So that raises a lot of questions,” City Councilman Nathan Field, who represents the Highlands community, said during the meeting.
Delaware business records show that Gibraltar Estate & Gardens Inc. was created on Oct. 8.
In December, Purzycki told Spotlight Delaware that the objective of the nonprofit was to hold the property until a final plan for the estate could be decided.
Though little is known about the new entity, the certificate of incorporation for Gibraltar Estate & Gardens Inc describes it as a nonprofit with a 10-member board of directors — five appointed by the Land Bank, and five appointed by Preservation Delaware. The documents do not state who has, or will, fill those positions.
In January, Freel told Spotlight Delaware that the incorporation documents were updated so that Land Bank members would not sit on the board, and that other community members would instead be appointed.
The documents also do not describe how the nonprofit will use the estate, beyond it being a “community amenity, accessible by the public and consistent with preserving the historic characterizations thereof.”
Since the transfer was paused, residents say they still want to ensure that there is community input, regardless of who gets hold of the property.
“We’d at least like to be informed and consulted and heard about what we would or wouldn’t ultimately want to see there, since we’re gonna have to live with the impacts on an ongoing basis,” longtime Highlands resident John Medkeff said.
Freel did not specify a timeline as to when the Land Bank would decide on a final plan for the Gibraltar estate.
