Feature
Brownfields taking on more affordable housing projects
At Bertha Triangle in southwest Portland, there’s a waiting list with 45 names of people hoping to make the new affordable senior housing facility their home. With 51 units available, Community Partners for Affordable Housing expects the building to be fully leased by early next year.
And that’s despite the fact that Bertha Triangle sits on a former brownfield. A junkyard and filling station in the mid 1930s, the site was contaminated with such pollutants as petroleum. A $180,000 brownfields cleanup grant from EPA has resulted in a clean bill of health and, perhaps more importantly, a “No Further Action” letter from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
So Bertha Triangle is being revived into a mixed-use development, with commercial space, parking and a community center on the ground floor. Included in the housing facility will be eight units set aside for formerly homeless veterans. The development is being built in the vibrant town center, where seven bus lines will serve the new residents. Construction is to be completed in November, says Sheila Greenlaw-Fink, executive director of Community Partners for Affordable Housing.
”It’s a phenomenal location,” Greenlaw-Fink says.
The cleanup and reuse of the Bertha Triangle is only one example of what’s going on with brownfields redevelopment in this country today. As the brownfields issue has matured, “housing activities have emerged as one of the fastest growing types of reuse activity undertaken on brownfield sites,” according to a report released last year by Charles Bartsch of the Northeast-Midwest Institute.
Over the past decade, more than 50,000 brownfield properties have been brought back to productive new uses, according to Bartsch’s “Linking Brownfield Redevelopment and Housing.” Case study research indicates much of the initial effort was devoted to commercial and industrial site revitalization projects. However, there’s growing interest in housing uses, as the link between brownfield reuse and smart growth and infill strategies becomes better understood. More communities and developers are interested in exploring ways housing projects--including affordable housing--can be successfully undertaken at brownfield sites, according to the report.
Still, there is a stigma associated with brownfield sites. While housing projects demand more stringent cleanup levels than an industrial or commercial operation, many people would choose to work at formerly contaminated sites but choose not to live on them, according to Bartsch’s report.
This is why strong community involvement, including public outreach and involvement plans, is vital to brownfield projects. In the case of Bertha Triangle, two half-day neighborhood charettes got people talking early about the project and green building strategies that would be incorporated into its construction, Greenlaw-Fink says. From 30 to 50 people attended each meeting.
The Kitsap County Consolidated Housing Authority (KCCHA) in Washington also does much community outreach, says Julie Graves, the organization’s development director. It’s important to keep the public informed, Graves says. And a “No Further Action” letter from the Washington Department of Ecology also helps, she adds.
The KCCHA expects to receive notification from EPA this month whether it will receive a $173,000 cleanup grant to build affordable senior apartments in Port Orchard. The site was previously used for street maintenance, street-sweeping equipment and the storage and heating of oil and tar. While the housing authority was invited to apply for a cleanup grant last year, it was unable to acquire the property before the specified deadline. So EPA was unable to award the grant.
The KCCHA has used brownfields assessment money in the past when it built the 42-unit Port Orchard Vista Apartments in 2004. The KCCHA plans to build 42 more apartments on 2 acres next door to the existing development. That development is full, Graves says, and she believes the new development also will fill up quickly.
“If we could create 300 units like this, we could lease them,” she says.
Greenlaw-Fink views affordable housing developments like these as a dramatic turnaround for the people living in them. She asks just how often people from low-income backgrounds get a safe place to live. Often times, low-income families are living in dangerous neighborhoods that need to be cleaned up. The cleaning up and redevelopment of brownfields can give more people a healthy home, she says.
The Bertha Triangle development is the first brownfield project for Community Partners for Affordable Housing. Really, this project wasn’t any harder than other project the organization has taken on, Greenlaw-Fink says. There is no easy land left in urban areas, she says.
Graves agrees. The KCCHA is interested in building on infill sites, and often these sites have some level of contamination, Graves says. Once cleaned up, the contamination isn’t a concern any more.
“We feel very confident that it isn’t going to be a problem,” she says.
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Problem Solver
Albany renewal project attracts private developers
Editor’s note: This is the second part in a series of stories following the city of Albany as it prepares to redevelop and revitalize its downtown waterfront in this west central Oregon town. We will check in every few months with the city and its partners as the project progresses from its beginning stages onward to the completion of its community vision. Read the first story in this series at http://www.buildingonbrownfields.com/2006/september.htm#profile.
While the sight of buildings coming down in downtown Albany, Ore., has people there excited, it’s the possibility of their resurrection into something new and prosperous that’s got the community even more energized.
RCM Homes, a Lake Oswego contractor, wants to build a residential complex on 8 acres that sit along the downtown’s riverfront along the Willamette River. The site is the former Inland Quick Freeze plant. The buildings there have been demolished and sit in piles waiting to be hauled away. (Little contamination--only minor traces of petroleum and asbestos--has been found on site.) RCM Homes proposes building up to 180 units that would target entry-level homebuyers with mid-range prices, says Duane Wilson, development manager for the company.
Among the project’s obstacles is the purchase of a small but vital piece of property owned by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad. The railroad is willing to sell the land to RCM Homes; however, the company has been working more than a year with the railroad to bring that to fruition, Wilson says. For the project to be successful, the company also would like to see some restaurants and other service-type business open in downtown to attract future homebuyers, he says. Still, the company is making plans for site development to begin in June or July.
“I think this is going to be a real catalyst for the downtown redevelopment,” Wilson says of the project and what’s to come for Albany.
When we last checked in last fall with Dick Ebbert, Albany’s economic development director, the city was in the fledgling stages of an urban renewal project that would redevelop a 1.25-mile stretch of its downtown. While still in the infant stages, the project is gaining momentum as more private business owners such as RCM Homes see potential in the urban renewal project. “It’s an amenity we want to try to capitalize on while we have the opportunity,” Ebbert says.
Albany, with about 45,000 people, is in the heart of the Willamette River Valley. Over the years, the city’s downtown, which once served as a center for river trade, commerce and community events, deteriorated as shopping centers lured businesses and residents away. City officials have talked for decades of forming public-private partnerships to redevelop the riverfront into a mixture of commercial and urban-residential properties. The Central Albany Revitalization Area (CARA), the city’s urban renewal agency, was formed to provide financial tools to implement the city’s plans and to attract new investment in the area.
CARA has awarded a $255,000 grant to a private development called Iron Works. That project includes townhouses, office space and apartments. CARA also has granted up to $758,000 to a 32-unit, four-story apartment complex at the site of a former grain elevator in the downtown area.
In another update, a Salem development company told the city last year it was interested in spearheading an overall riverfront redevelopment project. The company has since dropped that idea. CARA doesn’t see this as a setback. The agency is borrowing $5 million in preparation for future urban renewal projects on the horizon, says Kate Porsche, the city’s urban renewal coordinator.
In March, Ebbert and Porsche attended the Oregon Brownfields Conference in Salem. Hearing some of the spectacular stories of successful brownfields projects at the conference showed her why such projects are so worthwhile for a community, Porsche says. The spotlighted projects also opened her eyes to the varied scopes of these projects. She believes redeveloping brownfields makes sense economically and environmentally for the Albany community.
Plus, it’s nice to know you have state and federal officials in the brownfields program to call on, Ebbert adds. “It’s sure nice to know you have help out there,” he says.
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Groundwork
Form partnerships with those most affected by brownfields
Among the biggest issues brownfields developers will be forced to tackle in the upcoming years could be the unintentional displacement of lower-income families priced out of their neighborhoods by redevelopment, warns the executive director of the Portland nonprofit Organizing People, Activating Leaders.
Kevin Odell, executive director of OPAL, says communities across the nation are experiencing a mass exodus of low-income families from neighborhoods where properties that were once riddled with contamination now house such pricey projects as high-end condos and mixed-use developments. Often times, it’s the people with the least amount of choices getting moved around, he says.
As a result, more cities are seeing affordable housing getting rebuilt on their outer rims, leaving the people now living there, who already have fewer resources than others, with such problems as a lack of access to transportation, jobs and services, Odell says.
Any time we displace an entire community, we must create another community to replace it. “And there’s nothing sustainable about that,” Odell warns.
One way to stymie this trend is to get neighborhoods in these low-income communities impacted by contaminated properties more involved in the brownfield process. Low-income communities already have a disproportionate number of potential brownfields and vacant properties. In the past, developers and government agencies carrying out their due diligence have made a poor effort when it comes to reaching the people living in these neighborhoods, he says. Traditional methods--an ad in the paper about a public meeting or an e-mail to various real estate agents--aren’t enough because they aren’t reaching the people who call these neighborhoods home, Odell says.
To really reach those lower-income populations impacted by brownfields, government agencies and developers need to understand the affected communities by better understanding the people living there, Odell says. And that means teaming up with schools, churches and other institutions of faith, and organizations like OPAL and Groundwork Portland that serve these neighborhoods on a grass-roots level. These agencies or organizations already have made inroads into their communities and can serve as a partner in brownfields redevelopment, Odell says. Reach out to these organizations and attend their meetings to better connect with the people who are to be impacted the most by redevelopment, he says.
Government agencies and developers need to be better ambassadors in neighborhoods where potential displacement is a real issue, Odell says. By understanding a community’s needs and catering redevelopment to them, the focus will be more on urban revitalization, rather than urban renewal, he says.
In the future, brownfields will play a major role in how we plan our neighborhoods, Odell says. It will take some innovative approaches to determine how cities cater to their communities. And that will mean forming new partnerships and coalitions with the people who know their neighborhoods best, he says.
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