Wilmington Land Bank, nonprofit for city redevelopment, gets new director

A nonprofit touted as key for redeveloping blighted buildings in Wilmington has a new director nearly six months after the previous one resigned.

Bill Freeborn, a business consultant, has been named executive director of the Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land Bank, according to the organization's operations director Ray Saccomandi.

The Land Bank was established in late 2015 by the city and state to manage the city's inventory of vacant homes and find ways to return them to productive use. 

The first director, Christian Willauer, resigned from the position last July after 18 months on the job. She served as a consultant for the organization over the next few months.

Willauer said when she resigned that after kicking off the land bank program last January, it was time for a "transition."

Director of Wilmington land bank, 'key' to city development, resigns

"We’ve made a lot of progress in terms of setting up the organization and creating policies and procedures so the land bank can run effectively," Willauer said. "I felt it was a good moment for a transition to a new leader who could lead it to that next phase of growth."

The nonprofit, a public-private partnership formed with $1.5 million in city funds and a grant from Wilmington-based Barclaycard, takes in abandoned properties that the city is unable to auction at sheriff sale. 

The land bank is able to forgive any city debt on the property from accrued taxes, water bills and fines, wiping the slate clean for interested new buyers who were unlikely to buy a property with so much negative value.

The purpose of the nonprofit is to maintain such a property until it is sold to a responsible buyer who will restore it — as an owner-occupant, a neighbor annexing a lot to his or her yard or a nonprofit building affordable housing or a community garden.

The organization struggled to fill leadership positions after Willauer resigned, minutes from the land bank board's meetings show.

Wilmington officials kick off land bank, 'key' to new development

On Sept. 25, according to the minutes, Willauer as the land bank's consultant urged board members to hire an operations director and new executive director "because the Land Bank is a complex operation involving deteriorated real property, contracts with third party vendors, and multiple real-estate transactions, and lack of adequate staffing exposes the organization to considerable risk."

Freeborn runs his own consulting firm in Wilmington. In the 1990s he was a Republican Wilmington City Council member, and in the 1980s he was an assistant secretary of state under Gov. Mike Castle. During that time, he was also director of Delaware's Division of Corporations.

"Bill has extensive experience in all aspects of real estate investment, development and management," Saccomandi said in a statement.

Contact Jeanne Kuang at jkuang@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2476. Follow her on Twitter at @JeanneKuang.

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