Targeted for demolition more than three years ago, a 200-year-old hilltop mansion in Wilmington is now slated for revival as a six-unit apartment building.
The Dr. John A. Brown House, also known as the Anchorage, sits atop a hill on Seventh Avenue on the western edge of the Browntown neighborhood, whose name is derived from the physician and philanthropist who owned the house from 1848 to 1856. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The Wilmington Housing Partnership, the mansion’s current owner, signed an agreement this week with the Zahav Group, a Wilmington-based real estate developer. The agreement gives Zahav 18 months, plus a possible 6-month extension, to repair and restore the 5,425-square-foot mansion. The Housing Partnership will hold a $175,000 purchase money mortgage on the site, according to Robert L. Weir, partnership president and director of the city’s Department of Real Estate and Housing. The mortgage will be forgiven if Zahav satisfies the terms of the agreement, Weir said.
“We will try to preserve the original look as much as possible. From a historic perspective, we will make additions, not subtractions,” said Jane Katsnelson, a real estate consultant who assisted Zahav in working through the city’s approval process.
Katsnelson will continue to assist Zahav by overseeing the historic restoration aspects of the project, according to Sam Schnitzler, the developer’s chief financial officer.
Restoring the mansion will cost an estimated $700,000, plus up to $175,000 more for contingencies and price adjustments, according to documents presented in June 2023 to Wilmington’s Zoning Board of Adjustment.
“We’re feeling pretty confident” that the arrangement will work out, Weir said. “Their success is our success, and our success is the community’s success.”
A portion of the ground floor of the restored four-story structure will be available for community use, Weir and Katsnelson said.
This week’s signing of the agreement between the partnership and Zahav concludes a four-year chapter in the historic house’s saga. In 2020, the partnership issued a public request for proposals for “adaptive reuse” of the property, which had been vacant since the early 1990s and had become a popular target for vandals.
In early 2021, after it found no takers, the city recommended demolition of the mansion, hoping that would pave the way for a private developer to build about 40 townhouses on the site and adjacent land on its east side.
It triggered an uproar instead.
In February 2021, the city’s Design Review and Preservation Commission, which must approve demolition requests related to properties with historic significance, said it needed more information before making a decision. To battle the city’s proposal, a coalition was formed, with the Browntown Civic Association, descendants of former owners of the property and the nonprofit Preservation Delaware Inc. as its key members.
The Design Review Commission eventually decided that the city had not satisfied the requirements to permit demolition of the building. The city abandoned its demolition plan. Meanwhile, preservationists and neighborhood residents talked periodically – and not always in agreement – on how to move forward.
Some of the back and forth concerned whether the old home, should be restored as a single-family residence or redeveloped as apartments. The Corbett family, which owned the house from 1924 to 1980, had made apartment-like modifications so multiple generations could live in separate areas of the home, and Rob Howard, a subsequent owner, rented individual rooms, according to Debra Martin, Wilmington’s historic preservation planner.
Those interior changes, however, never resulted in a formal designation as apartments, which would not have been permitted under the R-3 zoning for the neighborhood.
In April 2023 the matter landed in the lap of Wilmington’s Zoning Board of Adjustment. Katsnelson, on behalf of Zahav, and the Housing Partnership joined to request a variance to permit converting the old home into a six-unit apartment building. After three separate hearings, the last in March of this year, the Board of Adjustment approved the variance request in early May.
Key points of the decision
The board‘s decision made four key points:
- After restoration and rehabilitation, it was unlikely that the property would yield a reasonable return to its owner if rented or sold as a single-family dwelling.
- Repurposing the historic building as apartments was its only feasible use.
- Using the building as an apartment would preserve, not alter, the character of the neighborhood.
- No evidence of any other feasible use permitted under the current zoning was presented to the board.
Once the variance was approved, the Housing Partnership and Zahav had to wrap up the details of an agreement to transfer the property.
The restoration issues
From 2021 through the Board of Adjustment hearings, some neighborhood residents said they wanted fewer than six apartments in the historic house.
“We were in favor of three or four apartments, not five or six,” Dorrene Robinson, president of the Browntown Civic Association, said at a hearing last year.
There remains some sentiment in favor of the smaller number, said City Councilwoman Yolanda McCoy, whose district includes Browntown, “but we can only push so much.”
The cost of restoring the building also factored into the discussions. In 2021, Weir told the city’s Design Review Commission that it would cost $1 million or more to make it habitable. Katsnelson, who has restored the Woodstock mansion in New Castle County’s Banning Park, said she could do it for much less, perhaps for as little as $200,000. Then, in early 2023, Zahav prepared a preliminary budget with a $484,000 estimate.
In a June 2023 presentation to the Board of Adjustment, Zahav proposed spending $700,000, plus a 25 percent allowance for cost fluctuations. The city considered that figure realistic. “We have to make sure developers know what they’re getting into,” Weir explained.
Zahav’s rehabilitation plans call for two rooms for community use on the mansion’s first floor. The six apartments would include three studio units – two on the first floor and one on the third floor; a one-bedroom apartment on the second floor, a two-bedroom apartment on the third floor, and a two-level three-bedroom apartment on the third and fourth floors. Tenants would have access to a laundry room and porch, and there would be eight parking spaces outside.
“Rents will be whatever the market bears. We want to help the community. We want to help the city,” Schnitzler said.
While Katsnelson said that Zahav will do everything possible to maintain the historic integrity of the property, Martin, the city’s preservation planner, said that the city is not required to track whether the developer’s work complies with historic preservation standards.
There would be compliance requirements, however, if Zahav secures historic preservation tax credits from either the state or federal government. In that case, it would be the state that monitors the restoration work, she said.
Katsnelson said the restored mansion will be “a beacon for the neighborhood.”
“We want to keep its historic value on the outside. On the inside we want it to be good for the community."City Councilwoman Yolanda McCoy's district includes Browntown.
“We want to keep its historic value on the outside. On the inside we want it to be good for the community,” McCoy said.
“We want to see it shiny on the outside,” Weir added.
Townhouses next door?
Still unresolved, Weir said, is whether and when townhouses will be built on the roughly 5-acre parcel to the east of the mansion.
The city is in continuing discussions with Beacon Asset Managers and Ryan Homes about developing the site.
Three years ago, during a virtual community meeting arranged by McCoy, a Ryan representative said the builder would not move forward with the project if the mansion was not demolished and fewer than 40 townhomes could be built.
Since then, Weir said, discussions have resumed. However, he said, the parcel’s sharp slope makes the site “topographically challenging,” making design considerations more complex.
He also noted that Ryan works most often in suburban areas, building projects of more than 30 units – about the maximum likely on this site.
Weir said the city is also concerned about the affordability of any homes that might be built on the site. “We’d be hoping for sale prices in the low $200,000s,” he said.
McCoy also noted that there are vacant lots at the bottom of the hill where a local developer is interested in building five townhouses.
“We welcome the development,” McCoy said, “but we don’t want a lot happening at one time.”
While the possibility of townhouses remains unclear, there is finally some certainty about the fate of the John A. Brown House.
“Against all odds, we’re coming to the final outcome,” Katsnelson said.
And Martin, the preservation planner, is pleased with that outcome.
“A vacant building is a vulnerable building,” she said. “I’m optimistic.”
