Melissa Nann Burke

The News Journal

Golf course would make way for 526 residences%2C a hotel%2C grocery store%2C pharmacy%2C day care center%2C gym.

Owner of Cavaliers Country Club to sell its 145-acre property next to Christiana Mall.

Proposed four-lane road would connect Churchmans Road and Centre Boulevard near Del. 7.

A Pennsylvania developer wants to remake the 145-acre golf course next to Christiana Mall into a mixed-use community of 526 homes and nearly 379,000 square feet of commercial space.

The complex would rival the acreage of the landmark mall and continue the infill of land on the margins of Delaware's retail megalopolis at I-95 and Del. 1.

"There's a significant daytime population in this area – not just the employees of the mall but Christiana Hospital and adjacent offices. It's fairly close to the University of Delaware, and it's deemed a growth area by the state," said Peter S. Miller, president of Carlino Development Group of Wyomissing, Pennsylvania.

"We see an opportunity for a community center really focused more on everyday necessities to serve the immediate community, and not to compete with the mall."

Conceptual plans for the redeveloped Cavaliers Country Club include retail shops tailored to daily consumer needs such as a grocery store, bank, pharmacy, day care and gym.

Other likely tenants include several restaurants, medical-professional offices and a four- to five-story, 110-room hotel – probably a Hilton or Marriott Courtyard, Miller said.

Residences would include 220 apartments, 133 townhouses, 86 twin homes and 87 single-family houses, although the balance of homes and commercial space could change based on feedback from neighbors, Miller said.

With project approvals at least 18 months away, officials and some neighbors are already wondering what the project could mean for traffic and quality of life for residents in the congested Churchmans Marsh area.

The county has OK'd more than 1.7 million square feet of new commercial space to be built nearby, including the 915,000-square-foot Christiana Fashion Center, whose first phase is under construction south of the mall. (With its recent additions, the 36-year-old Christiana Mall is roughly 1.46 million square feet, according to county records.)

In the works on the east side of Del. 1 is the 443,000-square-foot Promenade at Christiana – a redevelopment of the Sears warehouse and outlet on Eagle Run Road off Del. 273.

Also off Eagle Run, The Market Place at Christiana would feature a 119-room hotel, 221,555-square-foot shopping center and 15,600 square feet of offices. The second phase of the nearby Christiana Town Center would add 200,000 square feet of commercial retail near Boscov's.

"We really designed it back in the day to be a retail hub," state Sen. Karen Peterson, D-Stanton, said of the shopping district.

The vision for Cavaliers emphasizes pedestrian-friendly "walkability" and heavy landscaping, with swaths of green throughout the property called "parklets," Miller said. He plans to preserve 23 acres of open space with walking trails around the golf course's Lake Julian.

Miller stressed the project's "connectivity" with adjacent properties to better distribute traffic throughout the wider retail hub and the surrounding roadway network.

However, Carlino thus far has been unsuccessful in negotiations with Christiana Mall owner GGP to tie the Cavaliers property into the mall's ring road behind the Cinemark movie theater.

"We feel that this proposed development will create traffic congestion, and we have no plans to allow a connection to our ring road at this time," Steve Chambliss, the mall's general manager, said Friday.

Talks are continuing. Miller noted a preliminary traffic analysis showed the interconnection would actually make the ring road less congested.

From greens to green

Established in 1960, Cavaliers Country Club has struggled with dwindling membership in recent years, like many private golf clubs, said Robert A. Carucci, managing partner of club owner Cavaliers Realty LLC.

When he discussed plans to sell to Carlino a year ago, the club's contract covered just 70 acres, or half the golf course.

Plans expanded to develop all the land to allow for better drainage across the property, said Wilmington attorney Shawn Tucker, who represents Carlino.

Carucci said it hasn't been decided whether the club will relocate or close in several years after Carlino secures zoning and other official approvals needed for the project.

"Chances are that we'd just shut the front doors in two to five years," Carucci said. "We're continuing our membership now, and we're all right until we go to settlement."

He wouldn't disclose the value of the land purchase or other contractual details.

Miller is also mum on potential tenants being courted for the redeveloped site. His firm typically builds office complexes and shopping centers anchored by grocery stores.

Among Carlino projects under development is the 220,000-square-foot shopping center that's bringing a Wegmans grocery store to U.S. 202 near U.S. 1 in the Painters Crossing area of Chester County.

Zoning change

The Cavaliers project would likely require a change in zoning because the golf course is categorized as "recreational."

Carlino has not submitted any plans yet to New Castle County. When it does, it will probably request a special "overlay" district because of the various types of land use planned, Tucker said.

With the medical offices, the project could create 300 permanent jobs and 250 construction jobs, according to estimates provided by Miller.

After installing the major infrastructure, construction would likely begin first on the hotel, restaurant and retail structures, and apartments, Miller said. Carlino would build the commercial space but sell off the apartment community to an operator.

The garden-style apartments would be two- to three-story walk-ups around a pool and central green, Miller said. The rest of the homes would follow later on.

A 15-foot-wide berm would be built along the northern property line shared by the Cavalier condominiums and apartments as a buffer between communities, Tucker said.

He's forming a working group of neighbors from The Woods off Churchmans Road and the Cavalier condos, which back up to the golf course. Tucker hopes members will offer feedback on plans and inform their communities of the project's progress, he said.

"One thing they committed to is maintaining the wetlands, which is important to our community. Anytime there's a development like that, there's going to be traffic concerns, but they can't make traffic worse under the rules, so over time, they have to figure that out," said Kevin Andrews, past president of the Woods Civic Association.

"If something's going to go back there, I'd rather it be something like this, rather than more commercial development, like at the mall."

Yong Alev feels differently. She just bought her townhouse in the Cavalier community in May for its view overlooking the golf course. She didn't know the country club had plans to sell.

"That is a tremendous loss – the whole attraction for me was the golf course – an open area," she said.

"I don't mind if they develop it as a park, but retail and major residential is a major upset. I won't have privacy. I won't have a view. And that was the whole purpose of moving here."

Kathie Herel, a member of the Cavalier Townhomes Condominium Association, appreciates that Carlino wants input but feels the area is overdeveloped. She's concerned about the project's effect on the environment and remaining wildlife.

"It's disheartening to know that our state would not want to pursue preserving open space in some manner for the benefit of Delaware residents, rather than for the profit gained by out-of-state shoppers and developers," she said.

Connector road?

Sen. Peterson doubts New Castle County is prepared to buy the property, and it's too small to qualify as state parkland, she said. A property owner has a right to develop his or her property, subject to relevant land-use rules, she added.

Peterson does foresee a problem with how the development could affect Churchmans Road, also called Del. 58.

"You can't just have Churchmans Road as the only ingress/egress into this development," she said. "You just can't add that much volume."

A traffic engineer hired by Carlino estimates that the Cavaliers development would generate 5,650 trips a day, depending on the type of retail and the number of homes. That would represent an estimated 6 percent increase over existing traffic volumes on area roads, said engineer Nicole Kline of McMahon Associates Inc.

Tucker noted that traffic projections for the Cavaliers proposal would be a fraction of the traffic generated elsewhere in Churchmans Marsh.

Carlino hopes the solution is a new four-lane road through the Cavaliers property connecting Churchmans Road to Centre Boulevard near Del. 7, running behind Costco and other standalone "big-box" retailers south of the mall. Carlino expects to pay roughly half the cost of the roadway, Tucker said.

"You would need the connector. That would be more of a necessity than anything else," said planner Dan Blevins, who studies congestion management for the Wilmington Area Planning Council.

The mix of commercial and residential could actually help spread out the flow of traffic beyond typical peak hours, but much will depend on the type of retail at the site, Blevins said.

The state Department of Transportation agrees the proposed connector would increase circulation throughout the area, but funding for the road isn't in DelDOT's seven-year construction budget. It's too early to know whether other property owners that would benefit from the connector would be asked to contribute to the cost.

DelDOT officials discussed the potential roadway with stakeholders at a meeting a year ago, said Drew Boyce, director of planning for the agency.

"What we did make clear at the meeting was there's no capital project, no public dollars here at this point," Boyce said. "It's not a dead issue, it's just things slowed down on the Cavaliers side."

Parking lots

Until a connector road is built, the roadway into the development, Country Club Drive, would dead end at the south end of the property, east of Costco, according to concept plans.

To ease congestion generated by the project, Carlino would likely need to upgrade the traffic signal at the intersection at Churchmans Road and Country Club Drive, Kline said.

She's proposed double left-turning lanes from Country Club Drive onto Churchmans, widening the intersection and lengthening the turning lanes on Churchmans approaching Country Club Drive. That should help to avoid significantly adding to current delays at the intersection, she said.

Another traffic signal might also be needed within the development if it ever connects into the ring road of Christiana Mall behind the movie theater, Kline said.

While mall owner GGP isn't interested in vehicular access between its ring road and the Cavaliers project, pedestrians would likely try to walk between the shopping centers, causing traffic-safety issues.

Chambliss of GGP said he's yet unaware of proposed pedestrian connections between the properties. "We haven't discussed that possibility, but it does have merit," Chambliss said.

Even with 6,000-plus spaces, parking is already tight next door at Christiana Mall, where employees are being asked to park off site and take a shuttle to work during the holiday season.

Shoppers have often bemoaned the lack of a parking garage or structure at the mall. Finding a space on a Saturday in December can take 20 minutes or more.

The Cavaliers would offer roughly 1,600 parking spaces for retail shoppers and separate parking for residents.

Blevins, of WILMAPCO, said he'll be watching to see how the mall's new parking and traffic configurations function this season with the additional draw of the movie theater and Cabela's.

"If it's mayhem right now, that might figure into what they have to do," he said. "It's going to be tight."

Contact Melissa Nann Burke at (302) 324-2329, mburke@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @nannburke.

PROJECTED TRAFFIC

Development Daily trip generation* % increase in daily traffic Christiana Mall expansion, including Cabela's, Cinemark theater 1,555 vehicles a day 1.7 percent Christiana Fashion Center (under construction) 12,740 vehicles a day 13.6 percent Cavaliers property redevelopment 5,650 vehicles a day 6 percent

*Estimated based on trip generation data from studies by the Institute of Transportation Engineers

Source: Carlino Development Group and engineer Nicole Kline of McMahon Associates Inc.