Brownfields Update for the Pacific Northwest

Gone are the days when public officials stood in front of an audience with their poster boards, pointer sticks and an already mapped-out plan for redevelopment, leaving no chance for a community to have its say in what’s best for a neighborhood.

Instead, the public today wants to be involved long before that poster board ever comes out.

“That’s what makes it fun,” insists Nick Warner, special projects manager for the Office of Community and Economic Development in Burlington, Vermont.

And if you’re doing your job right, people will show up and give their ideas. They will participate in the discussion and the planning. If not, you haven’t engaged people in the process, Warner says.

“It isn’t hard getting people interested,” he says.

How brownfields redevelopment can rebuild a sense of place in a community will be among the topics at this year’s annual Town Meeting at the Brownfields 2006 national conference, Nov. 13-15 in Boston (www.brownfields2006.org). The Town Meeting on Nov. 14 will feature panelists sharing stories of new and innovative uses for brownfields and how they were able to create a sense of community and place from once abandoned and contaminated sites.

Warner, who’s among the speakers at the Town Meeting, says including the public in the planning stages of brownfields redevelopment is key to building a sense of place.

While cities are beginning to share this viewpoint, they didn’t always, he says. Just a few years ago, many cities were making assumptions about what was good for a neighborhood. But you can’t plop something down in the middle of somewhere and say that’s the definition of place, he points out.

For example, in another community, a golf course was built in a low-income neighborhood. While the developer thought he had a good idea to spur economic growth, there was much backlash from the neighborhood, which thought the property could have gone to a more suitable use.

“What you end up with still needs to be appropriate for the neighborhood,” Warner says.

When looking at a brownfield, a developer or municipality first must consider how that property–when redeveloped–would impact the city, Warner says. Next, they should determine if a redevelopment project would have real community support. Finally, they should explore the possibilities for that property, going beyond simply looking at its current zoning regulations.

For example, a priority for the city of Burlington, Vermont’s largest city, is affordable housing. The city has one of the oldest housing stocks in the country and one of the lowest vacancy rates. That means high rents coupled with an aging housing supply. In Burlington, brownfields must be considered when looking at housing options, Warner says.

In the 1990s, Burlington completed a large public process where people voiced their opinions on what should be done with some of these lands. It was clear people thought it was a priority to clean up these sites, Warner says. Another critical component during that process has been working with the nonprofit housing sector, which has a gage on the public’s needs, he says.

In Springfield, Mass., a vital piece to determining the public’s priorities has been the neighborhood councils. The city has 17 neighborhoods with voluntary councils, which serve as an important communication tool between the public and city council, says Katie Stebbins, deputy director of Economic Development for the city of Springfield, located in southwest Massachusetts.

In Springfield, the market has been oversaturated with low-income, multi-family housing. The neighborhood councils would like to see more market-rate housing. These are neighborhoods with 8 percent to 15 percent home ownership, says Stebbins, who also will be speaking at the Town Meeting.

Because of the public’s priorities, little time is spent looking at large commercial sites in Springfield. Instead, the city there has chosen to target the smaller sites–maybe a quarter of an acre–that were abandoned in neighborhoods and are a deterrent to redevelopment, Stebbins says. The city aggressively seeks to take control of these properties for nonpayment of taxes. It’s a way to eliminate these sites from a low-income neighborhood and attack one of their biggest environmental injustices.

Stebbins advises other developers and municipalities to be upfront and honest with the public when redeveloping a site. And that means about the costs, too. “It helps them gauge their expectations about what can go on that property,” she says.

When redeveloping these sites, it’s also important to pay attention to such details as pedestrian flow and aesthetics, issues important to the people who live in the neighborhood, Warner adds.

Stebbins also advises communities not to get so focused on the larger brownfield sites that they overlook these smaller projects that can turn a neighborhood around. “And sometimes leverage even more community investment.”