Why a developer wants to donate 30 acres near Hockessin for a new public park

At a New Castle County Board of Adjustment meeting at the end of March, developer Greg Pettinaro announced a perhaps unlikely gift.

He told public officials that he no longer wanted to build 19 mansions at the western edge of the onetime Hercules Country Club near Hockessin, where some of the nation’s best and brightest chemists once golfed.

Instead, he proposed donating more than 30 rolling acres of bucolic grass and trees to New Castle County. That public land donation — on the west side of Hercules Road, at Lancaster Pike — wouldn’t just clear the way for a public park, say county officials who support it. It would be a linchpin for a long-planned network of walking and biking trails that would criss-cross the northern part of the county.

What’s more, Pettinaro’s company, Newport-based Pettinaro Management, would sweeten the pot by donating $50,000 to defray county maintenance costs.

“At the end of the day, we thought it would be a good sort of public service thing to do," said Pettinaro when reached by Delaware Online/The News Journal about the donation.

Those 19 houses were approved in 2020 as part of a much larger project called Delaware National. For the past four years, Pettinaro Management has been busy turning the rest of that former golf course, across Hercules Road from the proposed park, into an expansive and ambitious residential development boasting more than 200 homes.

Big diggers and yellow planning signs, along with the paved beginnings of future roads, dot the sides of Hercules Road and Lancaster Pike as of early April. So do homes in various states of completion, built by national conglomerate Ryan Homes for a seemingly unending supply of new Delaware house seekers.

So why would Pettinaro want to give up those 30 acres to the public, instead of turning a buck? And what does the county want to do with it? Here’s what we know about the proposed 30-acre park in Mill Creek.

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So who’s Pettinaro Management?

Pettinaro is a familiar name in these parts, a multigenerational Delaware real estate family with its name on dozens of commercial and retail projects across the northern part of the state. Projects range from the retrofitted Daniel L. Hermann Courthouse in Wilmington to the Blue Hen corporate center in Dover, not to mention minimalls and multifamily housing all over New Castle County.

Recently, CEO Greg Pettinaro has made a habit out of successfully building big projects in places where others went down in flames — often through concessions and diplomacy.

His company successfully lured in Wegmans to anchor a 56-acre mixed-use Barley Mill Plaza project in Greenville, after previous developer Keith Stoltz gave up on his own, much more expansive, Barley Mill plans after years of lawsuits and local resistance.

The same goes for the Delaware National site. The project’s previous developer, Toll Brothers, walked away after a failed legal battle with the county that went all the way to the Delaware Supreme Court. Toll Brothers had unsuccessfully fought not just traffic improvements required by the Delaware Department of Transportation, but also the authority of the county to require them.

Landowner Pettinaro Management, which had bought the former country club land for $9 million in 2009, decided to instead develop the Delaware National project itself. The company smoothed the way for new housing by agreeing to put up about $4 million for traffic upgrades.

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After spending all that money, why would a developer want to give away 30 acres of prime real estate?

In part, Pettinaro said, the land to the west of Hercules Road is less prime than it would seem.

“The west side of Hercules Road was approved for estate-type lots. Larger lots,” Pettinaro said. “Larger-sized, Greenville Overlook-type houses are not the hottest product going right now.”

Those estate houses would have been built during the last leg of the project, said Pettinaro, meaning the land would sit fallow for at least two to three years, he said. Informally, outside observers have noted that extending utilities under Hercules Road to reach an isolated pocket of 19 homes might have also been expensive.

By donating the land, Pettinaro is also able to remove the costs of clearing, maintaining and paying taxes on the land, he said. He acknowledged that a tax write-off is an added perk.

“I think every developer in the area would love to give the county their private open space,” Pettinaro said, laughing. The Parks Department had originally balked at the gift because of maintenance costs, said Pettinaro — and so the $50,000 gift was meant to remove the budget issues for the first year or two.

He’s glad to be able to offer a public amenity to the surrounding area, he said, calling the donation a “win-win.” He noted that both public officials and community members have enthusiastically received the offer.

What are the county's plans for the Delaware National land?

The property donation would help meet preexisting goals for the county, say councilmembers Janet Kilpatrick and Dee Durham, whose districts the overall Delaware National project spans.

The land donation is not yet official, and neither are any plans for a prospective park. But constituents have already begun voicing their wishlists, say the two councilwomen, whether pickleball or a disc golf course.

But perhaps more importantly, the land dovetails with county plans to build a network of hiking and biking trails.

A citizens group, Millcreek Neighbors for Safer Pathways, has long been advocating for better trails to help residents in the northwestern part of the county safely — and maybe also pleasantly — traverse the areas bisected by the busy car artery of Route 41.

After consulting with the Department of Public Works, Councilwoman Kilpatrick believes the 30-acre plot is a vital puzzle piece connecting up with many of the county’s existing plans for trails.

Councilwoman Durham had previously been in talks with Pettinaro about potentially donating or selling the entirety of the Delaware National site as open space.

But the 30-acre parcel offers many of the same possibilities, she said.

“It's a great parcel to start creating the transportation network in the area, including maybe a pathway that follows the Red Clay Creek,” Durham said. “I’m excited.”

'Beware of kings bearing gifts'

Not everyone is as enthused.

“Beware of kings bearing gifts,” said Bill Dunn, a retired former DuPont employee and civic leader. If a developer is offering land for free, he told Delaware Online/The News Journal, the county should look very closely at it.

For more than a decade, Dunn has been warning of potential chemical runoff from the former Hercules chemical plant, where ingredients for Agent Orange were once manufactured.

A group he led, the Milltown-Limestone Civic Alliance, attempted to sue the site's previous developer, Toll Brothers, over environmental concerns more than a decade ago. The MLCA also privately funded tests in 2013 that showed measurable residue of toxic chemicals called dioxins near Hercules Road and Lancaster Pike.

The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control has since assessed and approved the site for housing construction after extensive environmental remediation, Pettinaro said, and environmental regulations on residential properties are more stringent than those for parks.

Dunn calls Pettinaro’s land gift generous and acknowledges that his worries about chemical runoff on the land are still speculative. But he said the county should conduct additional testing before taking responsibility for land that may turn out to be an expensive poison pill.

If there’s additional testing needed, the county should, of course, do so, said Councilwoman Durham.

But Councilwoman Kilpatrick, whose district includes the proposed land gift, is skeptical any such testing is warranted. State environmental agency DNREC has already certified the site as safe to build housing, she said, and the county has already approved construction.

Without evidence, there’s no good reason to spend county money second-guessing the agency whose job it is to certify environmental safety, Kilpatrick said.

A few hurdles remain before the land donation is official

Pettinaro’s land donation is conditional on an important technical detail. To donate the land, Pettinaro needed the county’s Board of Adjustment to approve a variance to the county code.

In removing the 30 acres from the overall Delaware National project, the housing development fell below its required allotment of open space — because the land Pettinaro was donating would no longer officially be counted as part of the project.

The board voted unanimously to approve Pettinaro’s petition, but this vote must still pass a required comment and technical review period before the decision takes effect. From there, it may take a few additional months before the land deal becomes official.

The deal would likely also require approval by the County Council, Kilpatrick said. But she would be “very surprised” if this doesn’t happen, given support from the Department of Land Use, Public Works Department and multiple community organizations.

Mark Blake, on the board of the Greater Hockessin Area Development Association, spoke at the Board of Adjustment meeting, saying the opportunity for 30 acres of open space was simply too good to pass up at "the very low price of zero."

He pointed toward California, where mansions with large private estates have sat fallow for years after a turn in the market. A public park is a much better result, he said.

"This is a great event," Blake said. "So we salute the Pettinaros for doing this."

Matthew Korfhage is business and development reporter in the Delaware region covering all things related to land and money: openings and closings, construction, and the many corporations that call the First State home. Send tips and insults to mkorfhage@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Developer Pettinaro to donate golf course land for Hockessin area park