Will The "CVS Focus Group" Support Removal Of Deed Restrictions At Corner Ketch and Paper Mill Road? Find Out 7:30PM September 16th In Hockessin

Calling All Communities!!! 

CVS – Whiteman’s Garage Information Session 

CVS Focus Group Presentation at 7:30PM is on the agenda of the monthly GHADA Meeting Monday, September 16th, 7:00 PM Hockessin Memorial Hall 

Sponsored by Greater White Clay Area Civic League and Greater Hockessin Area Development Association

Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick sent this along ~

The information session is being held to discuss the proposed CVS on the Whiteman’s Garage property located at 604 Corner Ketch Rd, Newark, DE 19711. 

The big fuss is that Dempsey's Service Center at Whiteman's Garage has ironclad deed restrictions - backed by New Castle County - that were put in place back when the garage owners wanted to expand their business. Now that the owners want to sell the property, the deed restrictions are "in the way".

CVS project attorney Lisa Goodman has been working since at least January 2013 with NCC Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick and Mark Blake of GHADA allegedly to "find a way to talk the surrounding community into embracing the project by breaking the deed restrictions". I am told they went so far as to orchestrate the formation of a new Civic Umbrella group, the Greater White Clay Area Civic League (WCACL), to ostensibly "help them achieve their ends". Ain't the local scuttlebutt wonderful?

But this much is true and from my direct experience: Mark Blake, the GOP 2012 candidate for County Executive and GHADA and CLNCC officer, told me he had his friend, land use attorney Shawn Tucker, write the articles of incorporation for WCACL pro bono in exchange for other favors done in Hockessin over land use issues (particularly, for running the focus group Blake ran for a year for Tucker to get "community buy-in" for ST zoning requested for Tucker's Walker Farm project). 

Are the by-products of lengthy, drawn-out focus groups a real community buy-in or is it a facsimile, a likeness, a mere astro-turf-styled grassroots fakery?

I attended the NCC Planning Board public hearing in December 2012 where the Walker Farm project was discussed. Focus group leader, Mark Blake and Councilwoman Kilpatrick were adamant in scolding the Board because the Board questioned the project on fundamental inconsitencies with the county's good planning objectives. 

Blake and Kilpatrick, without ever disclosing publicly their involvement in seemingly manufacturing public opinion through a focus group, admonished the Board for claiming that they ALWAYS HEAR how the county wants community input and now, HERE IT IS and how DARE THEY ignore it!

I only found out about these focus groups in May 2013 but I was a witness to this December display of hubris - as if their focus group product was somehow sacrosanct despite - as far as I can tell - NEVER HAVING HAD A COUNTY PLANNER at their meetings to explain the county's best practice and objectives for sound growth principles.

Shawn Tucker will tell you he knows the county code inside and out because he wrote the code while NCC General Manager of Land Use.......Why have a county employee attend his focus group when he so clearly can answer all of the community's concerns.........right? (Kilpatrick subsequently went to inordinate lengths to get her way and get the project approved but that's a story for another day).

State Rep. Paul Baumbach has been attending CVS focus group meetings from their inception and in a phone call Thursday morning, told me that the prospect of a county land use planner attending has never been raised. As he said it, Janet Kilpatrick never recommended inviting a county employee as a resource for the group. 

I told Paul how the focus group for the Walker Farm blind-sided the Planning Board with a proposal that went squarely against best practice and county planning goals and objectives. And about Blake and Kilpatrick's despicable tactic of publicly shaming the Planning Board (you can read it word for word in the meeting minutes or in Adam Taylor's News Journal story). Baumbach got my point and immediately recommended that a county administration staffer attend the next CVS group meeting.

Deed restrictions are always being challenged by developers who would foist their profiteering end game against the will of the community (See: Pike Creek Golf Course vs Dick Beck or Montchanin vs Stoltz)

As for CVS vs Whitemans' Garage, County Executive Tom Gordon is backing members of the community who wish to preserve the use of the land as settled under law. He sent me a copy of the deed restrictions when he heard that there was some doubt raised at Wednesday night's CVS focus group meeting about his support (email me if you want to see it and I will be happy to forward) ~

Attached is a copy of the well written deed restriction with the county…. I will always enforce the deed restrictions.

 

Respectfully yours,

Thomas P. Gordon

County Executive
New Castle County Government | Citizens First
87 Reads Way | New Castle, DE 19720

In a few weeks we'll see what is what and, after three-quarters of a year's worth of meetings, how much of the CVS focus group has been led to believe that amending the deed restriction is the best course of action for this quiet little corner of our county. 

I do know that many Pike Creek area residents attending the focus group are NOT in favor of the CVS and a crass commercialization of the corner with a convenience store. Will Goodman, Blake and Kilpatrick have something different to say? If I were a betting girl, I'd be taking bets.

~*~