Is ex-Wilmington mayor’s role in salvaging decrepit historic estate a ‘clear conflict of interest’ or his ‘crowning achievement’?

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Mike Purzycki stands on a lawn high above Wilmington’s Pennsylvania Avenue, at the foot of Gibraltar, a once-grand du Pont family palace that fell into a decrepit state over more than  three decades.

Below Purzycki is a stretch of renowned gardens whose pool, sculptures, magnolias, tulips, water lilies and other radiant blossoms draw thousands of visitors a year, free of charge.

Purzycki points to the work being done to restore the mansion’s 20-foot-tall conservatory, with disintegration that has long been visible to anyone passing by the 6-acre walled estate in the Highlands, the city’s wealthiest enclave.

“It basically fell off. It was so rotted that we couldn’t keep it together. It wasn’t sustainable structurally,” said Purzycki, who left office in January after eight years as Wilmington’s mayor and lives next door to Gibraltar.

He points to the 15-pane windows that form one wall of the structure that’s still under reconstruction.

“Notably, we have restored every single one of those windows. There are no new windows there,” he says. “They’re all the original old windows, 100 years old.”

Purzycki is anxious to show off the grounds and inside the 12,000-square-foot structure that was built in 1844 of blue stone from nearby Brandywine Creek.

He raves about the new $300,000 roof that replaced the original slate one that had sprung major leaks. The rain and snow that fell into the 30-room house caused debilitating damage, especially over the 13 years when two developers owned the property but couldn’t deliver a renovation project.

Then there’s the wide, winding staircase that rises from the street-level gardens. Once blanketed and blackened by debris and grit, the white marble walkway now sparkles.

The portico has been rebuilt, hundreds of windows have been scraped clean and shutters have been restored. There’s been major improvements to the estate’s greenhouse and a separate 3,800-square-foot carriage home and garage.

Inside the mansion itself, many rooms remain unsafe and need an enormous infusion of money to restore to a livable or usable condition.

But the library has been renovated and many floors, ceilings, walls and other fixtures have been stabilized in the long-vacant home that had become a magnet for urban adventurers and YouTubers who documented the so-called “haunted house.”

WHYY News documented the decades-long debacle in a Feb. 24 investigative report.

Gibraltar is in noticeably better shape now, however.

That’s because starting in 2023, near the end of Purzycki’s term, he made salvaging the estate his pet project, albeit one using some $3 million in federal, state and city funds.

First, he used the power of his office to have a city-created nonprofit agency, the Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land Bank, buy the 4.5-acre mansion and grounds for $900,000. The 1.5-acre Marian Coffin Gardens is owned by the nonprofit Preservation Delaware.

Ever since, Purzycki has guided the reclamation project, first from his ninth floor office in City Hall and then since January from his own sprawling home next door to Gibraltar.

Purzycki, who celebrated his 80th birthday this year, calls himself a citizen volunteer. He coordinates with developers and the Land Bank on reconstruction work. He meets with officials from the state Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs to ensure everything meets their standards for a building that’s on the National Register of Historic Places and has a conservation easement that governs what work can and cannot be done.

Purzycki is no stranger to redevelopment. Before his election as mayor in 2017, he spent two decades overseeing the dramatic transformation of Wilmington’s riverfront from an industrial wasteland into an entertainment and residential showcase.

While reviving the riverfront was a mammoth undertaking that helped propel him to become mayor of Delaware’s largest city, Purzycki said working to save Gibraltar has “been a labor of love.”

Now he’s trying to formalize his role in Gibraltar’s overhaul.

Gibraltar Estate and Gardens Inc.

Purzycki is the point man, along with neighbor and retired Wilmington attorney Charles S. McDowell, on a new nonprofit foundation — Gibraltar Estate and Gardens Inc. — that aims to guide the estate’s next chapter.

To that end, they want the Land Bank to give them the mansion. Preservation Delaware has already agreed to give the gardens to the foundation.

Purzycki said the foundation’s 10-member board has five members appointed by Preservation Delaware and five others, including himself, McDowell and Denison Hatch, longtime president of the Highlands Community Association.

The group aims to raise money to pay for continued renovations that hopefully will set the stage for a developer to take on an expensive project that meets state specifications for historic properties and Gibraltar’s deed restrictions and can get city approvals, such as a rezoning for a commercial use.

Another hurdle for any potential project is the approval of Highlands’ residents, who over the years have taken issue with several proposals, including an office park, wedding and event venue, and townhouses.

“What we’re trying to do is to get it to a level where somebody can walk in here and say, ‘I think I can see what could go there,’” Purzycki said. “But they can’t do it when it’s just so rotted that people look at it and it basically scares them right out the other side of the door.”

Councilwoman Darby objects, neighbors seek transparency

But not so fast.

The Land Bank was prepared to transfer the mansion and gardens last week during its quarterly meeting, when “Gibraltar disposition” was the first agenda item for new business.

But the board decided to defer action after residents, board members and City Councilwoman Shané Darby, who represents a different part of the city, raised questions about the process and the propriety of transferring Gibraltar to a group essentially led by Purzycki.

“I think that there’s a clear conflict of interest,” Darby said. “It’s a terrible idea. They really need to go back to the drawing board.”

Darby explained that elected officials, including herself, should not be “identifying a property that we’re interested in, going to our friends to put it under another entity” such as the Land Bank, then not run for re-election as Purzycki did in 2024, “and create a whole other new entity to then get that property.”

Darby said community members, fellow politicians and the media would lambast her if she had done something similar.

“Everyone would think that it was so wrong to do, but Mike Purzycki does it and everyone turns their head. It’s crazy to me,” Darby said.

Purzycki scoffed at Darby’s criticisms, emphasizing that he hasn’t received any money for his efforts, and only has the city’s best interests at heart by trying to fix up such a historic property.

“It hurts my head, it’s so stupid. It really is,” Purzycki said. “This whole idea of this big conflict and profiteering is so bizarre. It’s hard for me to get my head around.”

The former mayor welcomed any public or private entity to step up and continue the work he has been overseeing.

“I’d be happy to let anybody else do it who I believe could do it competently,” Purzycki said. “It’s got nothing to do with me. The fact is nobody else has done anything for so long. If the city wants to do it, fine. If the state wants to do it, fine. But nobody’s stepping up. Nobody wants to do this.”

Gibraltar neighbor Maggie Mesinger also attended last week’s Land Bank meeting, where she questioned the transparency of the process.

Mesinger told WHYY News that while she’s gratified restoration work that followed years of neighbors’ complaints has made Gibraltar estate “less of an eyesore,” she agrees that Purzycki has a conflict of interest.

“When he was mayor, he had the power to enforce the code and with the state to bring the owners into compliance,” Mesinger said. “So my frustration is there has been the power all along to nudge people into compliance and that didn’t happen.”

Now, with Purzycki poised to be legally at the helm of steering Gibraltar’s future, Mesinger said openness and clear communication with the public is more paramount than ever, since what’s ahead is so uncertain.

“So we certainly would like to know what the plan is and we’d like to have the community be involved in the discussions about the plan,” Mesinger said.

‘We were just banking it for a period of time’

Bud Freel, a former Wilmington official, city councilman and state representative who since February has headed the Land Bank, said the agency will reach out again to the community before bringing the land transfer back up for a vote, perhaps at its January meeting.

“One of the things that was asked [at last week’s meeting] was to hold another community meeting, which I’m going to try and make happen,” Freel told WHYY News. “I’d like to see if I could do it by the end of the year, but I’m not promising that that’s going to happen.”

Freel stressed that the Land Bank, where he did consulting work before becoming president, only took ownership of Gibraltar at the then-mayor’s request. Freel was not in his post when the board approved the acquisition of Gibraltar.

“The board agreed to do that with one stipulation, that we were just banking it for a period of time, and we would not spend any of our Land Bank money on the rehab of Gibraltar,” Freel said. “And that’s what happened.”

In recent months, Freel said, he’s been pressing Purzycki to find a way for the Land Bank to rid its inventory of Gibraltar. Freel said he supports giving the estate to the new foundation.

“It’s sad what happened to that property,” said Freel, who also lives in the Highlands. “I guess we’re all somewhat at fault. But I would love to see some sort of solution.

“It looks great right now, even if you just drive over and walk around the outside. There’s been a lot of progress made in fixing it up. I just hope we can find some productive use for it that will be acceptable to the neighbors.”

‘Saving the mansion could be a real positive boon’

The Land Bank held an informational meeting for residents at the Delaware Art Museum in May, and Purzycki provided a PowerPoint presentation to about 75 people about Gibraltar’s gloried past, dramatic deterioration and recent renovations.

Hatch, the Highlands leader, said residents have warmed to what Purzycki is doing.

“There’s broad consensus by many but not all people in the neighborhood that saving the mansion could be a real positive boon,” Hatch said. “There’s some people that have opposed many different alternatives, for various reasons.”

Hatch supports having the Land Bank transfer ownership to the new foundation and looks forward to contributing his ideas as a board member.

Gibraltar, he said, “is a unique site that can be developed. There’s now a group of people with different interests, different capabilities that I think can make this sustainable. We have to continue to rehabilitate it and be open to finding something for a sustainable future.”

Hatch said he believes Purzycki’s contribution has been a godsend.

“I guess there’s issues that he lives close to the property, but I don’t see a conflict of interest there,” Hatch said. “He’s pouring energy, hours into this and I just have total trust in Mike. He’s done a lot for the city and I think that could be his crowning achievement.”

Dee Durham, board president at the nonprofit Preservation Delaware and a member of New Castle County Council, supports the proposal that once again merges the gardens with the mansion. The two had been split up in 2010 when her statewide group, unable to forge a deal for the property, gave the mansion to developers Drake Cattermole and David Carpenter.

“I just think it will be better for the property to know it’s to be looked at holistically by a dedicated group of community members,” said Durham, who is also on the new foundation’s board. “It might take a few months, but I hope it will go through one way or another.”

As for Purzycki, Durham said “he’s getting a little criticism, but he sort of said, ‘Look, I got tired of watching this thing decay right in front of my eyes.’ The people that are complaining about what’s going on, it’s hard to argue that he hasn’t made it look a lot better.”

“Hopefully, we will find either a public or a private use that’s synergistic with the property for the buildings,” Durham added. “In the meantime, we’ll just keep doing what we can as funding allows to stabilize them. Keep the exterior maintained and chip away as funding allows. As Mike says, ‘The future will reveal itself to us.’”

Purzycki said he realizes that some neighbors are skeptical, especially since no one can predict the future of Gibraltar.

But the former mayor said he’s perceived more support from neighbors and others as they have seen improvements take hold.

“What I’ve seen in the community is a real change of heart about Gibraltar,” Purzycki said. “People are uncomfortable with the way it’s been so grossly mistreated over the years. I think they’re willing to consider an alternative. But what that alternative is, nobody knows yet.”