Emails show businesses sought Rodney Square bus decision from Carney before public meetings

A plan to remove hundreds of buses a day from Rodney Square appears to have been settled even before a rancorous, and legally required, public comment period had begun.

Months before Delaware's transit agency formally announced the plan in September, Wilmington business leaders emailed and met privately with the governor and members of his staff, pressuring Delaware’s executive for “final decisions” to the long talked about disassembly of Wilmington's central bus hub, public documents say.

In one email sent in April, Chemours lobbyist Greg Smith told the governor, "as you know," a “grand bargain” had been struck between his company and the Buccini/Pollin Group, or BPG. It was a deal, he said, that would result in a $200 million investment to the historic DuPont building, which sits across Market Street from Rodney Square, and is now home of Chemours headquarters.

Smith then segued to the issue at hand – “permanent steps” to remove buses from Rodney Square.

“It was our view that, regardless of whether Chemours stayed in the DuPont building for a couple years or a couple decades, Rodney Square would be our front yard,” Smith said in the email.

Smith did not respond to a request for comment. A Chemours spokesperson declined an interview.

The News Journal obtained through an open records request hundreds of emails sent during the past year to the governor’s office from Chemours and other downtown businesses. Most were redacted in their entirety, including the governor's responses.

A handful of non-redacted messages, as well as subsequent interviews, illustrate how Wilmington businesses lobbied the state with claims that buses were dragging down the city's economy – even as commercial cores elsewhere have relied more heavily on transit in recent years.

In an interview on Friday, Carney defended his decision to remove buses from Rodney Square, which took effect in December. Wilmington’s central business district had already suffered a litany of corporate exits in past years, he said. DuPont left its namesake building and Bank of America consolidated the once-mammoth headquarters of MBNA Bank, he said.

Carney said the many buses in the area created crowds of riders at Rodney Square, in which criminal activity could be hidden. Crime deters business, he said.

Wilmington must "strike that balance between the needs of bus riders and the needs of a vibrant central business district,” he said. “The idea of a transfer station there seemed incompatible with our desire to have a strong central business district."

Asked if he feared Chemours might leave Wilmington if buses were not removed, Carney said his concerns about Rodney Square predate emails and meetings with Smith.

Named for Delaware founding father Caesar Rodney, Rodney Square sits in the middle of Wilmington's business district surrounded by banks, law firms and the former DuPont building, which today houses Chemours’ headquarters.

On any given day, hundreds of people wearing business attire flood the area, many driving in from the suburbs. Until December, when bus stops were removed, they shared the space with hundreds of transit riders.

The removal of daily stops also has been met with a backlash. Claims of preserving economic vitality and public safety have not resonated with many bus riders, who see the state’s decision as an attack on the working poor.

John Flaherty, leader of the Coalition to Keep Bus Service on Rodney Square and noted Delaware open government advocate, expressed concern last week that the governor’s office formed the policy away from public’s scrutiny. Chemours and BPG’s thoughts about Rodney Square should have been expressed during the public comment period, he said.

“Clearly, when you have secret meetings that appear to be going on, that’s not how you conduct public policy,” he said.

As routes no longer meet at a central location, some Wilmington bus riders now walk upwards of a half mile to transfer between buses.

Tasmania Wootson, a disabled grandmother of eight, told The News Journal in February that her new bus stop forces her into a scary walk home.

"This is a travesty of justice," Wootson said. "It is dark. There is no complete lighting. There is no police protection around."

In response to outrcy, Delaware's transit agency DART restored two routes to the square in February. Still, many riders say it isn’t enough.

“The bus riders are the victims,” said John Flaherty, leader of the Coalition to Keep Bus Service on Rodney Square.

Private meetings

Five days prior to Smith's April email to Carney, BPG’s co-president Robert Buccini sent a message to the governor’s chief of staff, Doug Gramiak.

In it, Buccini claimed that Rodney Square’s market for commercial office space is among the worst in the country, as measured by its number of vacancies.

He said the cause of the problem was the offices' proximity to buses.

“I am certain that we can reduce the number of stops on Rodney Square to less than 250 stops per day,” he said in the message. At its peak, there were four to five times that many stops there a day.

BPG is Wilmington’s largest private landowner and has undertaken a string of redevelopment projects over the last 20 years, including ongoing construction at the DuPont building, referenced in Smith's email.

The company’s total investment in Wilmington over the last decade alone is well north of $1 billion, and included apartments, townhouses, condos, restaurants, office buildings and hotels.

Buccini said the email to Gramiak was his latest effort in a five-year campaign to persuade the government to remove bus stops from Rodney Square.

In an interview with The News Journal, he claimed that “a wall of buses” at Rodney Square had created an environment that was ripe for crime. And, the illicit activities could be hidden from the gaze of police and security cameras by the tall vehicles, he said.

Buccini insists the square only should be used as a park, similar to its character before bus stops were added in the 1990s, he said.

“We went from having a square and a park to a transit hub,” he said.

Flaherty contends that public safety at Rodney Square could have been addressed with more police and security cameras in the park, without needing to disperse bus riders. Plus, he said, buses can aid criminal investigations as they also have security cameras that capture images of riders coming and going.

“If he’s saying we need cameras in the square, then I agree with him,” Flaherty said.

In 2015, a man was stabbed to death while protecting a young mother and her baby from a knife-wielding attacker. Both Buccini and Carney noted this tragedy as evidence of crime in the square.

In 2016, the state had planned to retrofit the park with new security cameras, as well new bus kiosks by the end of that year, yet the proposal never materialized.

DART CEO John Sisson told The News Journal in September that his agency had funds to pay police officers overtime to patrol the square, yet he couldn’t find enough officers to volunteer for all shifts.

What followed from Smith's and Buccini’s emails was a meeting between the governor and downtown Wilmington business officials on May 16.

The News Journal learned of the meeting’s existence after the fact only because it was referenced in emails sent to the governor, including one from Buccini whose recipients also included officials from Rodney Square companies, such as the law firm, Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, M&T Bank, and Bank of America.

Carney on Friday said he didn’t “remember specifics” of the meeting. No such meeting was disclosed on the governor's public schedule.

Yet, the meeting made an impression on Smith, who in a June email asked Gramiak for "final decisions" to be made about the buses.

The group met again with the governor's office on Sept. 18, according to emails.

Asked if his and other lobbying forced the removal of Rodney Square buses, Buccini said the governor makes his own decisions.

“You had companies like DuPont pay a premium to move off of Rodney Square,” Buccini said, referencing the company’s 2014 decision to its corporate headquarters to its current Chestnut Run suburban campus.

A new bus station is being built next to the Wilmington train station and is scheduled to open in 2019. Buccini declined to speculate whether he believed businesses there may be impacted by buses.

Public battle over the city's heart

Last September, when DART publicly announced the removal of buses from Rodney Square it called them "proposed changes."

"In efforts to improve operational efficiencies, reduce congestion and improve traffic flow, changes would be made to Downtown Wilmington bus stops and route boarding locations," DART's announcement stated.

At a subsequent public meeting in Wilmington, which was attended by roughly 70 people, comments turned it into a battle over the core of Delaware's largest city.

Business owners, employees of Buccini/Pollin Group and a representative for Mayor Mike Purzycki spoke in favor of the proposal.

When Downtown Visions Executive Director Marty Hageman had his turn to briefly express support for the proposal, some attendees jeered, shouting, "Do you ride the bus?"

At points during the meeting, comments escalated beyond the scope of specific bus route changes to a discussion about socio-economic and racial divisions in the city.

"Y'all so concerned about these lawyers and the people with the businesses, and this and that ... and I think you should do more with your money for the youth and the city," Darrell Anderson, a bus rider from Wilmington said. "That way there wouldn't be people hanging out at Rodney Square."

Also at the public meeting, Sisson said the decision to remove the buses had been made at the governor’s urging.

Yet Carney also emailed to DART a formal letter of support for the changes. In the letter, the governor called the proposal a "win, win" for riders and businesses.

“We need to be able to attract businesses large and small to the Square,” he said in the email. “With the migration of Bank of America and DuPont out of the City, Wilmington is hurting for employers.”

Public comments submitted to DART did reveal that not every white-collar professional employed near Rodney Square was in support of the bus route changes.

Martin Lessner, an attorney at Young Conaway Stargatt & Taylor, sent an email to DART late last year in which he claimed that "the removal of the Rodney Square stop is problematic" as he and other riders will have to walk many blocks to new stops.

"It is not logical that a bus serving commuters (or shoppers) in a dense city center has a distance of a half mile between stops," he said.

In a response, DART spokeswoman Julie Theyerl said the changes were made to improve the efficiency of the bus system by reducing downtown layovers.

"While the initial reaction to bus routing/bus stop changes was negative, once implemented, many DART riders are finding their new bus stops and/or transfer locations more convenient," she said.

Contact Karl Baker at kbaker@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2329. Follow him on Twitter @kbaker6.

Read more

Take our quiz: Does Buccini/Pollin own this building?

Era ends as DuPont sells its hotel

New life for old Wilmington spaces

