Westtown may ax its historical commission over a dispute to preserve Crebilly Farm’s 19th-century inn
The historical commission has sought to preserve the property, while the township has planned to auction it off.
A schism between Westtown Township’s elected officials and its historical commission reached a boiling point this week, with the municipality’s supervisors planning to remove the commission over what several members say is a disagreement regarding a historic building that residents have fought for years to preserve.
An email sent to each of the six volunteer commission members Monday alerted them that Westtown’s three supervisors planned to take a vote at their meeting next week to remove them.
At the center of the conflict is the historic Darlington Inn, a 19th-century building that sits on a two-acre parcel at the corner of State Routes 202 and 926. The inn was acquired in 2024 as part of a larger battle, led by the community, to preserve the 206-acre Crebilly Farm and fend off plans for residential redevelopment of the land.
But the township has regarded the inn, which is along the farm tract, as a temporary purchase that it would eventually auction or sell off to recoup the $200,000 in taxpayer funds used to buy it. That has put the officials at odds with its own historical commission, whose members have adamantly fought to preserve the inn.
“It’s really disheartening,” said Pamela Boulos, who has served on the commission for roughly a decade. “It’s really disheartening to know that this is the level that they’re willing to go to.”
In an email, shared with The Inquirer, that included the subject line “Courtesy notice,” Township Manager Mila Carter said she was providing “advance notice, as a courtesy,” that the board’s agenda for Monday’s meeting “will include an item regarding your appointment to the Historical Commission.”
“The Board will be considering a motion to remove your appointment from the Commission,” she wrote. “No action has been taken at this time, and the matter will be discussed and considered during the public meeting.”
She also notified members that the commission’s planned Tuesday meeting had been canceled.
Members said they were told separately they could reapply.
The township did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
The board’s decision comes as tensions have been increasing between the commission and the elected officials. Commission members say the relationship has grown more hostile recently, particularly as it pertains to the Darlington Inn.
Last week, supervisors voted to rezone the property to commercial use, rather than agricultural or residential. The change would allow for “future adaptive reuse” of the inn, board members said previously. They said in April that the inn is currently not at “its highest and best use” by sitting vacant.
Commission members felt that the community had largely believed that the inn was to be preserved alongside Crebilly Farm when the township purchased it in 2024. When it became clear the intention was to offload the inn as a separate parcel, the commission began to raise awareness among residents about the possible loss of the building. Members said they wanted to see if there was appetite from private donors to purchase and maintain the property.
And the community, which has been willing to enter the fray to preserve the tract, started showing up to meetings.
“My belief is that some of the supervisors felt that this was untenable, this was an annoyance, this was interfering with what they wanted to accomplish,” said Stephen Wahrhaftig, who has been on the commission for four years. “A few of the people on the commission were viewed as the troublemakers, and to get rid of only one or two people probably would have been bad optics … so the easy thing to do, as other townships have done, is just dissolve the whole thing, just get rid of it.”
At its July 6 meeting, Patrick McDonough, chair of the historical commission, asked the township to consider easements on the land, to preserve the facade of the structure. The commission wanted to guard against “Wawa popping up there, or CVS,” he said separately.
The board of supervisors declined to put any restrictions on the property. Jodi Nawrocki, chair of the board, said at the meeting nothing precluded the township from adding such easements in the future.
“I think the way to use the building to the best use is through changing the zoning,” she told McDonough.
McDonough said he felt that, in the process of the commission arguing its point, the board “thought that we were overstepping our bounds as a historic commission.”
“My own township is willing to just auction this building off with no protection, no easements, and allow it to basically fall into the hands of what everybody else wants to do with it,” McDonough said. “I never thought that my own township would be the one I’d be fighting against the hardest.”
The commission, formed in 2013, was created to help develop community appreciation of the township’s history and to preserve that history. The commission has created Westtown Day, an annual community day; has published a history book about the township; and hosts a litany of lectures. The volunteer-run body is appointed by the supervisors for three-year terms, and serves as an advisory committee to the board.
“You would think, being a municipality in one of the oldest counties in America, that historic preservation, especially here in our year of America 250 … would be top of mind and not something swept aside,” Wahrhaftig said. “But I guess right now that’s not the case.”
Want to get Inquirer Chester County straight to your inbox every week? Sign up here for our guide to the news, stories, and events shaping life in your community.
This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.