The recent acquisition of the DuPont Country club means that the Brandywine Hundred community will be staying that much more out of the hands of developers.

Roughly 500 community and club members showed their support and attended a presentation in which they also got to give some feedback and last minute ideas before the new owners put the men and women they've hired to work on some major upgrades.

Ben duPont and Don Wirth were longtime members of the club when they heard that different zonings and projects could have infringed on their club and decided to do something about it.

"We are not developers. We are members, we are neighbors and we are Delawareans," said duPont. "We mostly bought this to make sure that developers didn't buy it."

DuPont noted that now the sale is done, it's time to get to work and held a meeting in the banquet hall of the club house just off Rockland Road.

"We have ambitious plans to invest $18 million into this wonderful facility," said duPont.

Those plans include three swimming pools that will serve competitive, family, and children swimmers, a fitness center and a world-class golf training facility that will accompany the means for members and the community to have access to some form of the links year-round.

duPont also noted that a pet peeve of his for some time now has been the quality of food and that he plans on upgrading that with more farm-to-table quality meals.

"This should be the best place to get fat and the best place to get thin," joked duPont.

All that in mind, duPont headed into a meeting the new owners held to inform the community of their plans and they hoped to get feedback for a broader dialogue for anything they may have missed in initial planning.

"So with all these changes, we want to make sure that we are engaging with the membership and engaging with the community," added duPont.

New Castle County councilman Bob Weiner has been championing the preservation cause for 25 years and called duPont and Wirth heroes that came in to save the land while he worked on the legislative side of things.

"Ben and Don are very community-invested," said Weiner. "They're neighbors."

While Weiner is confident in the direction his corner of the county is going, he is now planning to watch the proceedings closely and keep the community that the club-owning duo is out to preserve, involved.

"This project is going to have to go through the county land-use department approval process," noted. "I'm dedicated to making sure that process goes smoothly and the community knows each and every step-- and if there's any holdups, I'll make sure to help facilitate to make sure we stay on time to deliver our community country club next year."

Weiner noted that with duPont and Wirth at the helm, that it's not just the duPont Country Club, "it's our country club."

The community present at the meeting and in the month and a half since the purchase became official agreed with the councilman's notion.

"I think the thing that overwhelmed us the most was the volume and the positive community response to our purchase," said duPont. "We thought it would be good. We just didn't think it would be this amazing so I think it becomes incumbent on us to live up to the standard and the excitement that the community has around this."