Why redevelop brownfields

Provide opportunities for habitat restoration, parks, or other public spaces. Related links Paying for cleanups Affordable housing-related cleanups Washington State Brownfields Conference How the cleanup process works. Contact information Ali Furmall ali. Were you able to find what you were looking for today? Please include details that will help us address any issues you're reporting. Yes No I didn't use Search. Yes No Not sure. What were you trying to find?

Please describe your experience. What was challenging? What was helpful? Was the search tool helpful to you? How can we improve our website? The states would welcome federal financial support for their programs, even though many will rely on private user fees to finance program administration.

Most cities discover that the unknowns outweigh the facts about older industrial and commercial properties. Knowledge is an essential ingredient in effective strategy development—ask any corporation employing knowledge strategies to best their competition. Communities with brownfields must inventory these sites and investigate the risks and opportunities associated with these properties. Properly used, the information from these investigations can help separate real from perceived problems related to site conditions and future development potential.

Knowledge can help manage the risks and reduce the uncertainty. In short, we need to end the hysteria about brownfields, which may motivate political action but also may reduce public and private confidence that cities can be revitalized and made whole once again. This search frightens all levels of government as budget-cutting pressures continue to grow across the public sector. Corporations and private property owners, on the other hand, reject the notion that they should either pay clean-up costs that may be unnecessary or pay for pollution problems created by previous owners or third parties.

Overall national costs to the public and private sectors of cleaning up brownfields are unknown because there is no agreed-upon definition of brownfields, and because clean-up standards continue to change. Both problems greatly affect cost estimates.

City officials are unable to assess the cost of property clean-up within their jurisdictions for the same basic reasons. Future use of risk assessment techniques, coupled with the use of more cost-effective remediation technology, will help to lower these costs.

In the absence of deep pockets, communities must identify creative approaches to funding site clean-up and redevelopment.

Through citywide planning, policymakers must establish useful priorities to guide their investments based upon future development trends and land use patterns. Serious environmental threats should be eliminated on any site, regardless of its development potential.

In most other cases, the development potential should be a primary factor in considering next steps. The public sector should engage corporations that own contaminated sites, banks, insurance companies, pension funds, and real estate investment funds to determine what is required to attract private capital to fund clean-up and redevelopment.

Private property owners, corporations and developers should seek state and local economic development groups as potential investment partners in returning these sites to productive use. Donald T. Much of his work focuses on financing the redevelopment of brownfield sites. Forest Service that offers clear guidance, including specific patterns for different types of sites, to help Baltimore green its vacant lots.

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