On July 5, the Cape Gazette ran a story headlined, “Lewes library charges lack of response over kiosk.”
The story detailed what Lewes Public Library lawyer Robert Gibbs called “stalling” by the Villages of Five Points on issues surrounding the kiosk.
Here’s what people need to know. In 2011, the Villages of Five Points developer announced plans to donate land to the library to be used for their new building.
According to a county ordinance, the land was to revert to the Villages of Five Points if the library decided not to build its new facility there.
As we know, the library chose instead to build at their present location. Now the library wants to sell the land that was donated to them.
That’s why they built the kiosk. They’re claiming it counts as a “library facility.” It’s an underhanded way of trying to have their cake and eat it too. Not only does the library want to sell the property, they want to remove any deed restrictions. This would allow the library to make more money by selling the land to a commercial developer.
That’s why the Villages of Five Points isn’t interested in “negotiating.” We have nothing to negotiate. We are waiting for the property to revert to back to the Villages of Five Points, as outlined in the county ordinance.
That’s it in a nutshell. The liibrary chose to buy property rather than accept a donation. Now they have a large debt they need to pay off. They want to solve their problem by handing us a problem - unsightly commercial development in one of the largest neighborhood open spaces in Coastal Delaware.
We are not willing to “negotiate” anything that would detract from the beauty of our neighborhood and lower our property values. We would also be responsible for repairing the roads damaged because of the extra traffic.
According to the county ordinance, the land will belong to us. We won’t settle for anything else.
John P. Eikrem
president, Villages of Five Points Property Owner’s Association
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