Copyright Wilmington News Journal
A Royal Farms convenience store and gas station is planned for the site of the former ChesDel Restaurant off Route 13. The plan requires the demolition of the abandoned restaurant and a historic 18th-century farmhouse on the property. The ChesDel Restaurant, a popular local eatery for 38 years, has been closed and vacant since February 2018. New Castle County's historic review board approved the demolition with conditions, including considering alternatives and adding a historical marker. A customer hasn't walked through the doors of the old ChesDel Restaurant off Route 13 (Du Pont Parkway), in more than seven years. Weeds snake up the side of the abandoned building, and more choke the parking lot. Some windows are boarded shut, and ceilings and walls are covered in mold. Graffiti tags blanket one side of the structure near the Delaware Route 1 toll plaza, south of the St. Georges Bridge, and stones are ready to fall off another side. The restaurant at Biddles Corner, long known for its warm service and homestyle comfort foods like chicken and dumplings, “Pop-Pop’s Spaghetti” and apple pancakes, has been closed since February 2018. Once considered a good local example of late 20th-century commercial roadside architecture, the ChesDel and a neglected 18th-century farmhouse adjoining the restaurant now look like they could be spooky attractions at nearby Frightland. The restaurant, constructed from two New Castle County area diners that date back to at least the 1950s, and the historic, decaying Vandergrift-Biddle farmhouse next to it, built around 1750, may soon meet the wrecking ball. Royal Farms plans Plans are moving forward for the construction of a Royal Farms on the corner site north of Port Penn Road, just south of Frightland. It's at the stoplight where traffic can turn from Route 13 north onto Route 1 to cross the Roth Bridge. Shawn P. Tucker, an attorney/partner with Barnes & Thornburg representing Two Farms Inc., or Royal Farms, appeared before the New Castle County historic review board seeking permission to demolish the two buildings that have notable significance in Delaware. Royal Farms spent about $3.6 million in September 2022 to purchase three adjoining properties off Du Pont Parkway, a total of 13.78 acres, to build a 5,406 square-foot convenience store with gas pumps. The overall cost to build the store, clear the land, and other expenses could be around $10 million, Tucker said. He said there is a need for the Royal Farms and gas pumps. The closest gas stations in the area now are in Middletown or Odessa. Tucker said Royal Farms did not want or need more than 13 acres. But two of the three parcels for sale were not the efficient size for the store, so a third adjoining property was purchased. He said only 20 to 25% of that additional land will be used for the Royal Farms. Plans call for the remaining commercial zone property to possibly be used for three additional retail buildings, an oil change establishment (2,535 square feet), an auto parts store (8,000 square feet), and a coffee shop (2,446 square feet). No date is set for when those buildings could be constructed, Tucker said during the hearing. "It's a question mark for the time being," he said. Remembering ChesDel Restaurant The Du Pont Parkway properties owned by Royal Farms have a total of 14 structures on the land that are proposed for demolition, but Tucker said only two of those merit historical significance ‒ the ChesDel and the Vandergrift-Biddle farmhouse. For several decades, the ChesDel Restaurant, which owners Earle and Mary Lester opened in 1979, was a popular dining establishment along the Route 13 corridor when the route was the main north/south thoroughfare in Delaware. It was named for the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, two miles away. Earle Lester and his brothers Claude and Richard originally were partners in the nearby St. Georges Canning Company with their father, Claude Sr., who had originally purchased the property in 1955 to grow corn for canning. The brothers continued to operate the canning company until 1970, when they sold the business. Earle Lester said after retiring from farming, he had always wanted to get into the restaurant business, according to News Journal archives. The ChesDel was assembled by combining two prefabricated stainless steel diners, the Viking Diner, originally located at Hares Corner, dating back to about 1954, and the even older Country Girl Diner, a diner that had once been in Wilmington. The Country Girl Diner originally opened in 1956 in Wilmington, but it might have operated even earlier, beginning in 1941 as the First State Diner, according to Breckstone Architecture, a Wilmington-based firm hired by Royal Farms, which looked at the history and structure of both the restaurant and the farmhouse. The Country Girl Diner was likely built by Mountain View Diners of Little Falls, New Jersey, a company that ceased operation in 1957 after producing over 400 diners. The Viking Diner may have been manufactured by Jerry O’Mahony Diner Company, an Elizabeth, New Jersey, manufacturer of roadside diners from 1917 to 1952 that is widely credited with making the first diner. According to News Journal archives, the Lesters paid about $18,000 for the two diners, and spent $20,000 to move them to the site. The ChesDel was expanded in 1989, and an addition was added in 1991. It was a gathering place for locals, a community meeting place for Rotary Clubs and other organizations, and a dining destination spot for visitors who traveled back and forth from the Delaware beaches. But when the Delaware Route 1 expressway was built to ease traffic to Sussex County and opened in phases from 1991 to 2003, it entirely bypassed the Route 13 corridor. Businesses like ChesDel suffered from the loss of roadway travelers. The Lesters retired after 20 years, but the ChesDel remained open and was operated by their daughter Dawn Lester, until late February 2018. Then, a sudden announcement on Facebook said that the restaurant was permanently closing. "To all of our customers over the past 38 years, thank you for all of your support. It has been a great pleasure serving our community. With tremendous emotion and anguish, we announce our closure," read the post. "I was surprised, quite frankly, that the ChesDel closed," said Tucker, who for years had served as New Castle County’s First Assistant County Attorney. "I've been there many times in my life, but, unfortunately, it failed." All restaurant equipment was removed soon after it closed. Since then, the building has been subjected to vandalism, including broken windows, kicked-in drywall, and destruction to the walls and ceilings. Delaware history: Do you remember the William Penn Diner at Hares Corner? Todd Breck of Breckstone Architecture said the wood siding on the outside of the restaurant is peeling and the inside has "totally deteriorated." He said the original stainless steel dining cars are now covered with stone. "It's fairly junky at this point," Breck said. "The ChesDel is not functioning and really has no reason to remain." Historically significant farmhouse The Vandergrift-Biddle farmhouse, constructed around 1750, has been expanded six times, the last time being in 1900. It was nominated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978, but has not been used as a residence for more than 50 years. The significance of the dwelling was attributed to it being a good example of two scarcely surviving architectural forms that once characterized much of the early housing in Delaware during the 18th and early 19th centuries, log construction and nogged braced frame construction, according to a May 2025 cultural resource survey by the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs. Changes coming: Plans in works to convert historic Montchanin inn to a care site for brain-injured A historic nomination form noted that the dwelling is “an important architectural document that clearly illustrates within the context of a single structure the evolutionary development of wooden houses through time.” Yet, years of neglect and repeated vandalism have made the ivy-covered farmhouse undesirable as a single-family home, according to Breckstone Architecture. The exterior porch is gone, some areas of the floor are missing inside, and the stone foundation is crumbling. "My feeling is, at this point, it is dangerous," Breck said. Tucker said Royal Farms, a family-owned company that operates more than 200 stores in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, West Virginia, and North Carolina, considered the possibility of preserving and restoring the farmhouse, but he said it was too expensive. "The cost of it is easily more than $2 million," he said. "Our client is not in a position to spend $2 million." Breck said he would be "ecstatic" if anyone were interested in moving the house and its six additions. The Historic Review Board voted on Oct. 7 to approve the demolition of the properties, but with conditions including that Royal Farms "strongly consider alternatives to demolition," such as adaptive reuse or moving the Vandegrift-Biddle House elsewhere on the property or to another site. The board also asked that Royal Farms consider an archeological study by a qualified archeologist before beginning any construction and, as a homage to the history of the site, put up a sign on the property acknowledging the farmhouse, as well as the ChesDel restaurant. It is not yet known if the farmhouse might be spared or when the wrecking ball could swing. Tucker did not immediately return a phone message and email.
