Fun Fact: Blackball Properties LLC

When the truth and the facts aren't on their side, some people resort to mudslinging and making things up.

Which is exactly what happened in our neighbors' 9/24/12 pre-trial brief.

By the way, this 18 page document took Ms. Cherry 18.25 hours to prepare plus 3.2 hours for Mr. Wolcott to review and revise - for a total of $6,275 in fees. Here's what that money bought:

The Blacks purchased lot 1703 under the guise of a shell corporation because they anticipated potential personal liability. The Blacks even went so far as to name the corporation "Blackball Properties" because they intended to "blackball" the Staffieris.

Really?! Here are the facts:

1. We formed an LLC because three of us wanted to invest in the property. An LLC is the most widely used entity for purchasing commercial real-estate, especially when more than one person is buying a property.

2. We are about half a mile north of Blue Ball (where Foulk Rd and Rockland Rd intersect the Concord Pike). This is where the Blue Ball Tavern once stood and Alfred I. duPont built the Blue Ball Barn for his dairy farm in 1914.

3. In 1999 the State of Delaware purchased the Blue Ball Barn property and started renovations in 2004. This was also the time period that DelDOT undertook the "Blue Ball Project" and reconfigured most of the roads around our part of 202 to accomodate our friends at AstraZeneca.

4. In 2004 the owners of 1709 Concord Pike, whose last name happens to be "Black", erected a Blackball monument at the corner of Murphy Road and Concord Pike as a tribute to the famous Blue Ball that stood a few thousand feet to the South.

5. During the Blue Ball Barn renovations, the original Blue Ball was relocated to a DelDOT storage facility and later discarded (per this 2008 letter). We're still waiting for that "suitable replacement" and out of solidarity we put our black ball into storage. The post remains and perhaps someday both the blue and the black balls will return.

6. Back to the LLC formation in 2011 - Two of the members of the new LLC have the last name "Black" and the third has a last name that many folks can't pronounce on the first try. And since we had been calling the corner "Blackball" for the past 10+ years it seemed like a good name.

The Blue Ball monument in 2002 before the barn was restored and the ball was lost by DelDOT

Scott Black & the Blackball monument in July 2004.