Feature

Turning brownfields green

City officials in Caldwell, Idaho, believe they’ve found buried treasure in their downtown, a treasure that will one day spark $100 million in economic growth.

That treasure is Indian Creek, which runs through the heart of the downtown. It was covered in the 1930s, because meat packing plants upstream polluted the creek, creating a stench. The creek today is covered in part under 6 acres of pavement and buildings. Surprisingly, the creek runs at 150 cubic feet per second and is up to 30-feet wide in some places.

Officials in Caldwell think it’s time to uncover Indian Creek and create a 130-foot wide green belt that meanders about six blocks through town. By uncovering the brownfield and turning it into a greenfield, development will follow, they predict. Ten-year projections estimate the creation of 300 to 400 urban housing units, 100,000 square feet of retail space, 200,000 square feet of office space, up to 150 hotel rooms and more than 2,700 jobs in a 1-mile radius of the project.

A city-funded demonstration project last summer uncovered a one-block portion of the creek to give the public a hint of the project’s potential, says Dennis Cannon, the city’s redevelopment coordinator. Soon after its completion, developers--including a winery--jumped at the chance to do business near the area, Cannon says. Other downtown businesses responded by cleaning up their buildings.

This fall, work begins to daylight the remaining 1,300 feet of creek. The $9 million project will be completed in late summer next year, Cannon says. The city has nine buildings, some recently vacated and others empty for some time, to demolish and remove. The city paid nearly $2.5 million to purchase the buildings, he says. A $200,000 EPA grant will pay for cleanup along the creek, which has some limited contamination.

This section of downtown has been dead economically for about four years, Cannon says. The city, in choosing to daylight the creek, believes there are no other options to stimulate growth. Long-range estimates predict that in five years the Indian Creek Daylighting Project will have sparked about $50 million in new investments in the downtown. In 10 years, about $100 million of development may occur, says Cannon, who envisions three- and four-story buildings along the creek.

“We’re dreaming big,” he says.

When dreaming of brownfields redevelopment, most developers don’t envision fields of green. Still, greenfields are a viable option for communities. They improve water and air quality, enhance wildlife habitat and control flooding. They provide open space for recreation and create waterfront access. In urban communities, they are especially important because of the limited open space.

And in some cases, greenfields can enhance economic development. Greenfields can serve as valuable economic assets by making neighborhoods more attractive to potential residents and businesses. These improvements create more jobs and increase tax revenue.

Parks generally are very political things, says Emery Bayley, technical services manager for the Environmental Coalition of South Seattle (ECOSS). While some cities don’t want a bunch of pocket parks to maintain, others see the need, he says.

Bayley points to Gas Works Park on Lake Union in Seattle as an example of a city capitalizing on the amenities that come from green space to attract people to an area and raise property values around it. Formerly the site of a coal gasification plant that powered much of Seattle, the land was cleaned up and turned into a popular 20-acre park.

“In my mind, that’s a classic example of a city’s foresight in redeveloping an industrial site for public use,” Bayley says. “It certainly has made a difference in the value of that area.”

People are beginning to reconnect with their waterways too, and they enjoy having resources such as green space available to them, says Chuck Harmon, brownfields coordinator for the Northwest Region office of the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. And they realize how important these green spaces are to the environment, he adds.

In his work, Harmon is working to form relationships with other environmental organizations, such as land trusts and watershed councils, so they too can take advantage of brownfields programs. Through these relationships, he hopes to create more opportunities for green space development.

Most brownfield redevelopment projects are typically supported by the economics of the marketplace and the attractive return on investment when a site is converted from an underutilized state into improved retail, commercial or residential reuse, Harmon says. No similar market or financial incentives exist for a site’s rehabilitation into green space.

All the same, Jim Neeley, supervisor of the King County Solid Waste Division, says in the last five years, his division has received more requests to assist in public space preservation than in years past. Many of these brownfields sites have brought a different set of problems, including contamination from drugs labs, firing ranges and petroleum tanks.

Greenfields always will be an issue for brownfields because of where brownfields typically are located: in urban areas, Neeley says. “You can’t have urban areas without parks.”

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Problem Solver

BEDI program serves as catalyst

Sitting in the center of Port Townsend’s National Landmark Historic District was a blemish in this otherwise small, picturesque town on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington. Two acres of contaminated property along the shoreline of Port Townsend Bay needed a new owner to come in and clean it up, rejuvenating that section of the historic district.

The Northwest Maritime Center and Wooden Boat Foundation, a nonprofit organization, stepped up with a plan for the property. It wanted to build an educational center that would celebrate the marine heritage of the Puget Sound while educating visitors about its history and importance.

The $12 million center would create jobs and serve as a spark in that section of town, says Dave Robison, executive director. However, to rejuvenate the downtown, the center would need some financial help to get started on cleaning up a major hurdle: the contamination.

From 1927 until the early 1980s, the property was a bulk oil transfer station. Barges docked there and transferred oil into tanks. Later, the oil was transferred to trucks that pulled up to the docks, where much of the spilling occurred. Over the past several decades, much of the contamination was flushed out with the tides, Robison says. What remained were two hot spots: a leaking tank and an area near the dock.

Through the city of Port Townsend, the maritime center applied for a grant from the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative (BEDI). In 2000, the project received a $500,000 grant, as well as a $1 million loan from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which administers the BEDI program.

In 2002, the grant dollars were used to clean up the site. About 2,500 cubic yards of contaminated soil were removed. The money also was used to pay for the removal of an old, damaged dock and to construct a new one.

Without the BEDI funds, the maritime center may never have gotten off the ground, says Pete Helsell, finance director there. In fact, the center didn’t close on the property until it had the BEDI grant, as well as an agreement with Unocal, a previous owner that agreed to pay for a large portion of the cleanup. Without the BEDI grant, the organization probably wouldn’t have purchased the property.

“We feel blessed, that’s for sure,” Helsell says. “It was a very important stepping stone for us.”

The EPA awards only a handful of BEDI grants every year. Annually, $10 million is available to applicants nationwide. EPA Region 10 is fortunate if it earns one of the grants each year. In fact, since 2000, only four BEDI grants have been awarded to cities in Region 10. The grant to Port Townsend was the first BEDI grant awarded in Washington.

The grants are used to stimulate and promote economic and community development. BEDI is designed to assist cities with the redevelopment of abandoned and underused industrial and commercial facilities where expansion and redevelopment is burdened by real or potential contamination.

BEDI grants must be used in conjunction with a Section 108-guaranteed loan commitment. Section 108 is the loan guarantee provision of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. HUD emphasizes the use of BEDI and Section 108 Loan Guarantee funds to finance projects and activities that will provide “near-term results and demonstrable economic benefits.” This program isn’t for site acquisition or remediation where there’s no immediately planned redevelopment.

Both Section 108 and BEDI grant funds are initially made available by HUD to public entities approved for assistance, such as a city. Such public entities may re-loan the Section 108 loan proceeds and provide BEDI funds to a business or other entity to carry out an approved economic development project, or the public entity may carry out the project itself.

There is a cap of $1 million per BEDI award. To be eligible for a BEDI grant, a project must meet one of the CDBG program’s three national objectives:

• Benefit low- and moderate-income people
• Prevent or eliminate slums or blight
• Address imminent threats and urgent community needs

Today, at the maritime center (www.nwmaritime.org), a capital campaign is underway to fund the construction phase of the project. The property is covered with a gravel bed and ready for construction, which is expected to start at the end of the year or in early 2007, Robison says.

When the project is up and running, it will have a $1.3 million budget and create 35 to 40 jobs, he says. However, perhaps more importantly, it will have an indirect impact on the city’s downtown revitalization and protect the working waterfront.

“I think if you have a good working relationship with your HUD staff and good congressional support, (BEDI) is definitely worth it,” Robison says.

The EPA Region 10 contact for the BEDI program is Donna Batch, economic development specialist for HUD’s Region X. Batch can be reached at 206-220-5374 or donna_batch@hud.gov. For more information, visit http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/economicdevelopment/programs/bedi/.

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Groundwork

Land-use controls save time, money

Land-use controls have become common tools developers take advantage of to get their cleanup projects completed on time and on budget.

“These are protective and they allow things--property transfers and development--to move forward,” says Joe Hickey, voluntary cleanup program and brownfields coordinator for the Washington state Department of Ecology.

Land-use controls can be divided into two categories: institutional and engineering. When an institutional or engineering control is used, that means some contamination is being left behind. The land-use controls are put in place so that contamination doesn’t harm any people or the environment any further. When using land-use controls in cleanup projects, property owners are essentially giving up a right to the land’s future use.

When property is sold, the land-use controls are included on the deed to the land; they do not simply go away with a new owner. A land-use control is a legally binding restriction on the property.

Institutional controls are used at contaminated sites that are cleaned up to standards that require restrictions on the future use of the site. They are commonly used today in cleanup projects, says Ann Levine, cleanup program coordinator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Some examples of institutional controls include allowing only industrial use of the land, restricting where buildings can be constructed, not allowing extraction of ground water for drinking water or other uses on the land, or requiring cleanup if an existing structure or pavement is removed.

Engineering controls are containment or treatment systems used to prevent or limit the movement of or exposure to contamination. They may include a tool such as a cap or groundwater containment system. With engineering controls, a property owner may be required to put money aside to ensure that five to 20 years from now, there are sufficient funds for the replacement or operation of the engineering control.

Land-use controls are tracked and monitored by a state’s environmental agency. In the future, a more uniform tracking system is being developed to share information, particularly about institutional controls, between the EPA, states, local governments and the private sector. The Environmental Data Standards Council in February announced it approved data standards for use on the Environmental Information Exchange Network.

To determine if a land-use control is for you, you must first have a solid plan for the reuse of the property. In planning for remedial action, make sure you haven’t given up a use for the property that you value--or will value in the future, says Keith Donahue, brownfields program manager for the Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

“It’s tougher if you don’t know what you want to do” with the land, Donahue says.

Donahue is a supporter of land-use controls. Idaho DEQ has done 14 or 15 of these in the last five years. In all incidences they’ve enabled people to move forward with less expense, he says.

Still, says Hickey, there’s really only one way to eliminate any restrictions on your land. “The old tried-and-true clean it up is still the most popular because there are no encumbrances,” he says.

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About this newsletter.

To help raise awareness of the economic and environmental benefits of redevelopment, Building on Brownfields brings you news and information on brownfields in EPA Region 10: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The newsletter is funded by the EPA through Washington state's Department of Ecology, and is a cooperative effort between the four states and the EPA.

For past issues of the newsletter, go to www.buildingonbrownfields.com.

This e-newsletter is sponsored by Washington's Department of Ecology
and funded by EPA.