Why Should Delaware Care?
One of Delaware’s largest companies sold its offices less than two years after moving to Wilmington, abandoning a project that was expected to reenergize the city’s downtown and was heavily backed by taxpayer dollars. Now, returned incentives are being redirected to other initiatives aimed at supporting housing and economic development.
Seven months after Incyte scaled back plans to build its headquarters in Wilmington, the city is putting $1.15 million in returned incentive money from the pharmaceutical giant toward creating housing and businesses.
On Thursday, Mayor John Carney’s office announced the city used the funds, rescinded from the company, to purchase four pieces of land along West 7th Street in Wilmington’s Quaker Hill neighborhood.
The city released a request for proposals (RFP), inviting developers to submit plans to build housing and commercial properties on the sites.
The money used to purchase the land came from a $10 million grant Wilmington officials quietly awarded to Incyte for its headquarters expansion back in 2024. The grant was not previously known to the public until the Delaware Business Times broke the story in April.
As part of an amended agreement with the city, Incyte returned $5 million, but it may retain the other half if the company employs an annual average of 200 full-time employees at the downtown Bracebridge building for a decade, a city spokesperson told Spotlight Delaware in July.
“This work is about stabilizing neighborhoods, creating opportunity, and making sure Wilmington remains a city where people can afford to live and build a future,” said Mayor John Carney in a Thursday statement.
City officials are ensuring affordable housing units are also built on the properties, though the total number of affordable housing units has not yet been confirmed, according to Caroline Klinger, Carney’s spokeswoman.
“At this time, we’re awaiting proposals and will have more clarity on specific plans for these units as those come in,” Klinger said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware.
New housing in Quaker Hill
Wilmington’s new land use investment comes as affordable housing has become a growing priority in the city. In August, Carney opened applications for developers seeking a share of the $8.4 million in affordable housing subsidies approved as part of this year’s budget. City Council members have also worked to direct funding toward short-term housing assistance.
Klinger noted that the city is seeking mixed-use developments. The properties are zoned for central retail (C-3) under city regulations — a designation that covers residential, commercial, and retail use and allows for a “wide variety of retail and display services,” according to the requests for proposals (RFP) on the project.
The city is looking for a developer to build a mix of at least three affordable housing units and market-rate housing, according to the RFP application. Klinger added that the total number of housing units will be up to the developer.
Developers awarded the Quaker Hill properties will receive city funding to build a select number of affordable housing units, set at 80% of the area median income (AMI) for a 10-year period.
For a family of four, that translates to a maximum annual household income of $98,150 according to HUD’s most recent income limits for Wilmington.
It’s also unclear whether the city will approve more than one developer, but Klinger noted that developers would be more likely to apply for all parcels rather than just a select few.
The city document also calls for redevelopment that benefits the surrounding community, boosts the city’s tax base and job opportunities, and improves neighborhood infrastructure.
The proposals and process are being overseen by the Wilmington Urban Development Action Grant Corporation (UDAG), which the city defines as “a quasi-governmental nonprofit development corporation, wholly owned by the city of Wilmington.”
UDAG had previously contributed $1.5 million of the $10 million city incentive to Incyte, Klinger told Spotlight back in April.
The sites, which city officials called “blighted and underutilized,” are owned by UDAG. They include three mixed-use buildings and one vacant lot, which the city purchased from private owners back in April, according to New Castle County’s parcel records.
The sites, located just west of downtown Wilmington’s central business district, encompass 301, 305, 307, and 309 West 7th Street. The properties are currently mixed-use buildings, with bodegas on the ground floor and apartments above them.
Developers’ proposals are due October 16.
The incentives behind the Incyte deal
The Quaker Hill project is the latest chapter in how state and local officials have chosen to redistribute the dollars that were rescinded from Incyte after the company decided to abandon plans to move its headquarters to Wilmington
In July, the state reallocated $4.5 million of the $14.7 million it had awarded to Incyte to an economic development initiative to expand business districts around the state, while the rest of the money was returned to the state’s Strategic Fund, which broadly supports business expansion in Delaware.
That state funding, in addition to the $10 million Wilmington allocated, was part of a package of incentives the city and state put together to bring Incyte’s headquarters to Wilmington in the first place.
Incyte has been headquartered just outside Wilmington’s city limits, in the Alapocas community, for more than a decade. Fueled by strong sales of its cancer treatments, the company had pushed in recent years to expand its existing campus there, but ran into pushback from nearby residents.
That opposition pushed state and city officials toward a different plan to court Incyte to bring its expansion downtown.
In spring 2024, Incyte purchased the twin Bracebridge office buildings, formerly home to credit card company MBNA, with plans to turn them into its global headquarters. The nearly $50 million purchase was widely seen as a win for the city, since the largely vacant buildings had sat as a drag on Wilmington’s office market.
Soon after, the state kicked in close to $15 million to help finance Incyte’s move downtown. During a meeting of the state committee that approves such subsidies, Kurt Foreman, then the head of Delaware’s public-private economic development organization, said the deal could lead to the creation of 866 new jobs in Wilmington’s downtown core.
Then in December 2024, Wilmington officials followed with a $10 million commitment of their own, which wasn’t publicly disclosed at the time.
Incyte poured nearly $29 million into renovating the properties during the remainder of 2024 and through 2025, according to the company’s own earnings reports. Then, last winter, construction activity appeared to stop.
The timing lined up with a leadership shakeup, as Incyte had recently named Bill Meury — a pharmaceutical executive with roots in Boston-area startups — as its new CEO. He succeeded Hervé Hoppenot, longtime leader, who had been the one to sign off on the Delaware deal.
Weeks after taking over, Meury said the company would be taking “a fresh look” at its operations, including its capital allocations, according to a report from Reuters.
By February, Incyte publicly announced its scaled-back expansion plans through a series of media interviews in which officials said the company would sell the Bracebridge buildings to Buccini Pollin Group, then lease back some of the space.
State officials previously told Spotlight that no new state dollars would be flowing to BPG for the project.
