Historic DuPont Building slated for redevelopment

For more than a century, an early 20th-century high-rise building in Wilmington, Del., served as the headquarters of the iconic chemical company E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. Now the DuPont Building and colocated Hotel DuPont have been sold to a real estate developer that plans to modernize them and turn them into a mixed office, residential, hotel, and retail complex.

DuPont, which plans to merge with Dow Chemical later this year, had bid adieu to the city of Wilmington in 2015 and moved its headquarters to nearby Chestnut Run Plaza. It handed over ownership of the 13-story hotel and DuPont Building to its fluorochemicals spin-off Chemours. DuPont continued to manage the hotel until February when it sold the business to the Buccini/Pollin Group, a Wilmington-based real estate developer.

The real estate group has now completed the purchase of the DuPont property from Chemours. It plans to refurbish 24,000 m² of office space and lease it to back to Chemours. The chemical company will continue to use the DuPont building as its headquarters.

Buccini/Pollin plans to lease an additional 5,500 m² of multitenant office space in the building. It also expects to carve out 180 luxury residential units from the DuPont Building, which dates to 1908.

The group promises to preserve the 1913 Italian Renaissance style Hotel DuPont, including the paneled two-and-a-half-story-high Green Room restaurant.

All told, Buccini/Pollin says it will spend $175 million on the complex redevelopment, which will also include 3,700 m² of ground-level retail and dining space.

Maintaining Chemours’s headquarters in the DuPont Building acknowledges its legacy, CEO Mark Vergnano says. The refurbished offices will also mark Chemours’s transformation into a “world-class chemistry company” in a “world-class work environment,” he says.