History
The Village of Yorklyn is downstream from a lot of decisions being made without input from its community.
What is Yorklyn?
The first thing that needs to be said: While the their histories are intertwined, Yorklyn is NOT Hockessin. We have never been Hockessin and while we have plenty in common we are very different from Hockessin.
There is confusion about what is Hockessin and what is Yorklyn. If you have a PO Box in Yorklyn, the attendant address is Yorklyn. If you get Rural Route Delivery, the address is Hockessin, but that is neither the historical nor cultural dividing line. The cutoff has always been perceived to be the Quarry on Old Wilmington Road.
Yorklyn is a small village, no matter how you look at it, with a small population. Hockessin is a much bigger with few guidelines for development.
The Greater Hockessin Development Association (GHADA) does not represent Yorklyn, but they have often tried to subsume it. They are a development association, not a community association. They advocate for development with no regard to or concern for building, maintaining, or involving existing community.
Tropical Storm Henri
The flooding brought the burgeoning vision of Yorklyn as an art-centered small destination to a screeching halt. All of the bridges that the Wilmington Western Railroad ran on were washed away. CCArts was severely damaged. Small businesses in the Snuff Mill Shops were forced out of their locations. The covered bridge at Rolling Mill Road was destroyed. The Red Clay Creek changed its course. 194 homes downstream in Glenville were also severely damaged.
Damage in Delaware caused by Tropical Storm Henri totaled 16.1 million dollars.
““What DNREC and Drake Cattermole (of CCS Investors and Quarry Walk, LLC) see as ‘undeveloped land,’ the community sees as habitat, mitigation of flooding, and future quality of life. Cutting down 10 acres or 430,560 square feet of trees and established habitat without community involvement or proper notice is a huge problem. It cannot be undone.””
Why Does This All Matter?
We are downstream from projects that are undoing the very flood mitigation that the whole Auburn Valley Master Plan (AVMP) was premised on. The felling of 10 acres of wooded land, which held water, changed the formula. Adding impervious area changes it further. Where will the water go when it can’t be absorbed? To Yorklyn and beyond.
In 2011, the Auburn Valley Master Plan was set forth as a Development Plan for the Auburn Valley*. The original vision was to create a public/private partnership that would be sensitive to the community’s history, culture, and aesthetic. This is no longer the case.
While mitigating the underlying flooding, contamination through a return of built upon lands to the floodplain and to wetlands, we could also connect to other mature, contiguous woodlands to create a corridor of preserved and protected land. All of which would be accomplished in keeping with DNREC’s self-proclaimed mission:
Engage all stakeholders to ensure the wise management, conservation and enhancement of the State’s natural resources
Protect public health and the environment
Provide quality outdoor recreation; Improve the quality of life
Lead energy policy and climate preparedness
Educate the public on historic, cultural and natural resource use, requirements and issues.
When DNREC added Drake McNish Cattermole’s 129 townhomes to the AVMP, without NCC oversight, they destroyed the Yorklyn community’s faith in their self-proclaimed mission.
The documents that were created to enable this “redevelopment” have, in actuality, become a system for gaming the regulations, oversight, enforcement, and laws that should be governing the urbanization of what was originally intended to be conservation land.
There is a serious lack of transparency here and what seems like a willful intent to circumvent the community of Yorklyn.
In 2011 the Auburn Valley Master Plan (AMVP) was set forth as a Development Plan for the Auburn Valley.
In 2016, things changed. While still showing the connectivity to other preserved and/or open lands, DNREC quietly re-designated an unconnected 10 acres of mature forest to brownfield status, and added it to the AVMP.
In 2021 DNREC did it again, with a smaller parcel of land, slightly closer to AVMP. No notice.
The Auburn Valley Master Plan proposal made in 2011 was based on a “need” to move quickly - they planned to accomplish this by bypassing New Castle County Planning and Unified Development Code. However, the promise DNREC made to honor Yorklyn’s historical, cultural, and community integrity is being broken by their skirting of NCC processes and policies.
Present Day
You have probably seen the construction site on Yorklyn Rd where Drake McNish Cattermole & his company, Quarry Walk LLC, cut down 10 acres of old growth trees - with no community notice - to build a subdivision of 25 townhouses (and later Mill’s Edge, bringing the total to 129 townhouses). DNREC has sidestepped New Castle County’s Unified Development Code involvement by adding Mill’s Edge to the Auburn Valley Master Plan - again, with no community notice or involvement.
“Presently, Quarry Walk is continuing to raise the ire of local residents. After Apex Engineering submitted an application to DNREC, Division of Water, to install twelve temporary 1500-gallon wastewater storage tanks at Quarry Walk, residents submitted a 100-plus signature petition requesting a hearing.”
Quarry Walk, LLC failed to build a pump house to connect the county’s sewage system to their site, insisted that it was supposed to have been NCC’s responsibility, and are now appealing to DNREC to allow for the installation of twelve 1,500-gallon sewage holding tanks (18,000 gallons in total), to be pumped every two days, while they build the sewage pumphouse. Neither Yorklyn residents nor the surrounding wetlands – which are home to many kinds of wildlife, only recently returned after the remediation of the land surrounding NVF – should have their quality of life impacted by Cattermole’s negligence.
“The conservation goals for the Red Clay Creek Valley are directed at working with the regional conservation organizations and neighbors to conserve and manage the Red Clay Creek Valley for habitat protection, viewshed preservation and appropriate rec‐ reational use.”