Ask Mike Purzycki about his brief professional career with the New York Giants in the summer of 1967 and the former University of Delaware football star will summarize it succinctly: “I wasn’t good enough to stay there, but I was good enough to get there.”
Back in Delaware – more specifically, in Wilmington – the capsule would be phrased a little differently: Purzycki was not just good enough to get here, but also good enough to stay … for nearly three decades.
After leading the redevelopment of Wilmington’s riverfront for 20 years, Purzycki was elected mayor of Wilmington in November 2016. He will complete his second term on January 7, officially ending his service to the city, and turn the reins of government over to John Carney, another former college football player, who was unopposed in the November election after eight years as Delaware’s governor.
Noting his successor’s extensive experience in government, Purzycki says there isn’t much he can tell Carney that he doesn’t already know. “I don’t know that John needs so much of my advice. I go back to you can’t win without good people. You rise and fall based on the people you have with you.”
It took Purzycki some time – about 18 years – to find himself in a job where he could have a massive impact.
After graduating from the University of Delaware and his brief pro football adventure, he worked in sales for IBM and then as a stockbroker, attended the Delaware Law School at night, served as a staff attorney for the Democrats in the Delaware State Senate, got involved in real estate development and spent nine years representing the Newark area on the New Castle County Council.
Those diverse experiences would serve him well when Vince D’Anna, a friend and longtime aide to then U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, called him not once, but twice, to urge him to consider becoming executive director of the Riverfront Development Corporation. Both times, he told D’Anna “no.” Unwilling to accept that answer, D’Anna called Purzycki’s wife, Bette. “I walked into the house and she started beating me over the head, saying you would love doing this. Think of the opportunity.”
“I walked into the house and she [Bette Purzycki] started beating me over the head, saying you would love doing this. Think of the opportunity.”Mike Purzycki's wife, Bette, implored him to take the Riverfront project job.
Purzycki had no choice but to relent and then-Gov. Tom Carper soon hired Purzycki for the Riverfront job. It was 1996 and, except for the new baseball stadium, there was little worth seeing on the west bank of the Christina River. “It was a hellhole…. It was ugly … nothing but World War II leftover garbage,” Purzycki says.
There was also a vision – a scaled-down version of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor to be created on the east side of the Christina, where the Southbridge Wilmington Wetlands Park was recently developed. Dredging that area was unrealistic, “but the idea that you could dream a little bit was fine,” Purzycki says.
That vision never advanced beyond a concept of a plan, but Purzycki would steer the riverfront through several iterations.
A gutted shipyard warehouse was transformed into an arts and exhibition center, which later became the Chase Center on the Riverfront, a venue for conventions and social events. The Kahunaville nightclub became the Delaware Children’s Museum. The Shipyard Shops were conceived as a retail destination filled with outlet stores. Handicapped by access issues and an inability to attract prominent merchandisers, they never caught on, but those storefronts now house a diverse array of businesses.
Restaurants and hotels, not to mention a miniature golf course, have filled the acreage between the Chase Center and the Children’s Museum. Long-neglected Justison Street has become more than entrance to the riverfront. Now it’s lined with luxury midrise apartments, neighborhood retail and more dining options. A new bridge provides easy access from South Market Street, where the 76ers Fieldhouse and outdoor athletic fields offer yet another attraction.
Guiding the riverfront development “was the most remarkable 20 years of my life,” Purzycki says, but he is quick to note that it was a team effort, a collaboration between the public and private sectors.
He credited the ongoing success to what he called a “star-studded board” of directors, comprised of key legislators and leaders of the state, New Castle County and Wilmington governments plus appointees from the business and nonprofit communities. “They gave me a long leash, almost too long…. We weren’t constricted by too many regulations …. And year after year they made sure we had the funding to make it work.”
From the private sector, much of the early heavy lifting was accomplished by developer Verino Pettinaro, who transformed the warehouse into an exhibition hall in less than six months, built the Shipyard Shops and other office buildings.
"Michael, I don’t know how you did this. I don’t think I want to know, but I’m glad you did.”Sen. Tom Carper's response to a swiftly-completed exhibition center, according to Purzycki.
When Purzycki gave Carper a tour of the nearly completed exhibition center, Purzycki recalled, the governor said “Michael, I don’t know how you did this. I don’t think I want to know, but I’m glad you did.”
Then came the Buccini/Pollin Group, prime movers in construction of three hotels and residences on both sides of the river, not to mention the redevelopment of much of the city’s Market Street corridor.
Purzycki moved from the Riverfront to the mayor’s office in January 2017, after winning an 8-way Democratic primary with less than a quarter of the votes cast and then securing 82 percent of the votes in the November 2016 general election.
The riverfront experience taught Purzycki a couple of lessons that would serve him well as mayor.
The first was a piece of advice he once gave former Mayor Jim Sills in the late 1990s: “Go out and build something. They can never take it away from you.”
The second, the result of the stops and starts of development and its multiple course changes, was “if you try to do everything, you get nothing done.”
Purzycki started putting those lessons to work as soon as he took office. He wanted to rebuild the city’s sense of community but had to do it in one neighborhood at a time. First up was West Center City, the area between Market Street and Interstate 95 known for its substandard and vacant housing, crime and violence. The city bought up vacant and nuisance properties, including a pair of liquor stores, and put $4 million into renovations at the Hicks Anderson Community Center, a hub of neighborhood activity. Vacant lots turned into parks, murals brightened the walls of aging buildings, and the community has begun to rebound.
More recently, thanks to $22 million in funding through the American Rescue Plan Act, Purzycki turned his attention to the East Side, working with the Woodlawn Trustees, Habitat for Humanity and primarily minority contractors to gut and transform dozens of deteriorating rowhouses into attractive homes, both owner-occupied and rental units.
Purzycki’s administration has also had a hand, albeit a minor one, in the development of Imani Village, the conversion of the aging 250-unit Riverside public housing project into a mixed-use community with 700 homes.
Also during his administration, the city has completed the South Wilmington Wetlands Park, provided home-improvement grants to about 500 residents, and allocated $14 million to improve neighborhood parks and public spaces, including the park now being created at the former Rodney Reservoir near St. Francis Hospital.
With the Hicks Anderson Community Center, the East Side housing rehabilitation and the Rodney Reservoir, Purzycki will have followed his “build something” mantra and enhanced the legacy he began at the riverfront.
His tenure as mayor, however, has not been without controversy. As the redevelopment he presided over on the riverfront moved north into downtown, concern grew over the growing numbers of individuals struggling with homelessness, addiction and mental illness. Program operators and advocates for these special needs populations complained that they felt they were being pushed out of the city. Purzycki told The News Journal in 2019 that “the high concentration of social services is an impediment to improving some of the more challenging neighborhoods.”
That feeling persists, as exemplified by the departure of the Creative Vision Factory, a peer-run center serving individuals with addiction and mental health issues, from Shipley Street and its relocation as the Wilmington Recovery Café to Union Street, and by the recent removal of several benches from outside Friendship House, a longtime gathering place for the homeless and others in need of social services.
Purzycki stresses the need for “balance” along Market Street and the downtown area. He emphasizes that “nobody gets displaced” from their housing through the development of new residential and commercial spaces on and near Market Street.
“The first thing people talk about when they object to growth … they say you must be gentrifying the city…. We never gentrified a single thing. All we’ve done is uplifted,” he says.
“It’s hard for people who have their own problems in their life to look at the big picture and say that’s good for the city,” he adds. “We have bills to pay, and those buildings pay the bills.”
As Purzycki nears the end of his term, another sort of building project – one which could well have an impact on how the city pays its bills over the long haul – is getting closer to the starting line.
“The first thing people talk about when they object to growth… they say you must be gentrifying the city… We never gentrified a single thing. All we’ve done is uplifted."Purzycki rejects criticism that his work to improve Wilmington ignored those with the greatest need and pushed them out of the city.
Wilmington City Council recently approved contributing $10 million from the city’s Tax Stabilization Reserve Fund to support the Longwood Foundation’s proposal to transform a former Bank of America headquarters building downtown into a higher education campus that would house the Widener University Law School, Delaware State University’s nursing program and the University of Delaware’s associate in arts program as well as provide office space for several nonprofits. Funding for the plan still isn’t complete. According to Longwood, it still needs $6 million to $10 million from the New Castle County government before getting started.
The city stands to lose about $300,000 in annual property tax revenue should the Bracebridge II building be converted to nonprofit status but would collect almost $264,000 in wage tax revenues from employees at the schools, offsetting nearly 90 percent of the property tax loss. Additional city revenues could be derived through increased downtown economic activity from the schools’ staff and students.
Purzycki looks beyond the mere dollars and cents of the project. “You can’t find a city our size around here that doesn’t have a major educational institution…. It adds a dimension that’s going to make our city more attractive,” he says.
Not only should the project create more opportunities for city residents, but it will also make the downtown more appealing to the businesses whose presence is essential to a vibrant downtown and an economically strong city, he says.
While Purzycki is approaching his exit from city hall, he’s not contemplating a total departure from the public scene. He serves as a Delaware State University trustee and he wants to devote some time to assisting in the preservation of Gibraltar, the decaying mansion near his home in Wilmington’s Highlands neighborhood.
“I’m terrified of not having a day filled with challenges,” he says.
Looking back on his career, Purzycki takes pride in his accomplishments while recognizing the benefits of good fortune.
“Somebody introduced me one day, and said the mayor overcame so many difficulties in his life to be where he is,” he says, “and I got up and I said you have me confused with somebody else. I never had those difficulties. I’ve been blessed my whole life.”
