What: Press Conference & Brownfield Tour
When: 11:00 a.m. to Noon, Tuesday, September 29, 1998
Where: Richmond Greenway Project (call 415-255-1946 for directions)
Who:
Edith Pepper, Policy Analyst, CA Center for Land Recycling
Rosemary Corbin, Mayor, City of Richmond
Judith Henderson, Director, Community Youth Council for Leadership & Education
Kate Bickert, Director, Rails to Trails Conservancy
Henry Clark, Executive Director, West County Toxics Coalition

RICHMOND, CA - An abandoned railroad right-of-way in Richmond is being showcased as an example of the enormous promise - and the considerable challenge - to redeveloping abandoned urban lots in California, and the need for statewide "brownfield" reform.

The press event in Richmond, hosted by the California Center for Land Recycling (CCLR), will be held the same day as one in Los Angeles featuring a former oil company site on the shore of Venice Beach. "Brownfields" are once-thriving commercial and industrial sites that now sit abandoned or idle due to the threat (real or perceived) of contamination. In California and elsewhere in the nation, these sites are often located in low-income communities of color.

Over the years, the 32-acre, 2.5-mile railway, which snakes through Richmond along Ohio Street, has become a dumping ground for everything from old furniture to dead car batteries. In some areas, weeds grow waist-high. Garbage and broken bottles are strewn around a large sign threatening a $100 fine for littering.

The City and some community groups hope to see the site redeveloped as a public park with bicycle paths and a community garden. Yet these efforts have been stalled due to lack of funding, particularly on the state level. This year, the City lost its bid for $40,000 in the state budget that it had hoped to use for planning.

This week, more than 50 of the most prominent business, environmental, community and agriculture groups in the state - from the California League of Conservation Voters to the California Chamber of Commerce - are urging the gubernatorial candidates to recognize brownfield redevelopment as a key strategy for revitalizing urban communities and preserving greenspace and farmland.

In a major new report on brownfields released this week, CCLR discusses the challenges to brownfield redevelopment and makes state-level policy recommendations for overcoming them. CCLR began as a project of The Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit land conservation organization based in San Francisco, in 1996.