Wilmington is littered with nearly 2,000 abandoned properties. Built in the late 1800s and early 1900s to house blue-collar workers who staffed the massive factories along the Riverfront and the City's East Side, they were once in high demand and filled with energy.Â
Now they sit, abandoned, vacant, falling down and decrease the quality of the surrounding neighborhoods. Since they have almost no economic value, there is no easy solution.Â
Bill Freeborn, Director of the Land Bank, the government agency tasked with trying to repurpose as many of these buildings as possible for 21st century uses, will shed light on the problem by telling the story of three of the more interesting buildings owned by the Land Bank. Â
For over three decades, Freeborn has been a leader in both the public and private sectors in Delaware. As Senior Vice president with Corporation Service Company (CSC), he oversaw sales, marketing, brand and product development across the organization. Under Bill’s leadership, the company grew dramatically from $5mm to well over $400mm revenue at the time of his exit.Â
After successfully exiting CSC, he founded KBF Advisors, LLC, a regional consulting firm that specializes in early-stage and developing companies, providing strategic planning, go-to-market strategy and government relations direction. In addition, through his real estate subsidiary, he has designed and developed over $20 million of unique vacation home properties on the Jersey Shore and in Vermont. And, during the 2015 legislative session, he led the initiative to modify Delaware’s medical marijuana statute, allowing for the development of high-level cannabis research following cGMP processes.
In January 2019, Freeborn was selected to lead the Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land Bank (WNCLB). This not-for-profit Public Private Partnership was created in 2016 to manage the City of Wilmington’s more than 2000 unit inventory of blighted, vacant and abandoned residential properties. The WNCLB is aggressively embarking on a plan that includes strategic property acquisition, select demolition and the repackaging and disposition of properties for site specific and larger scale redevelopment opportunities.
He is a graduate of Colgate University with additional executive education studies at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Stanford University.
