Environmentally-impacted properties, or “brownfields” are often the most challenging sites to sell in the real estate business. Market failures mean municipalities can’t find buyers and developers can’t access information about the sites in a timely and efficient way, causing uncertainty and long lead times. This runs counter to the residential property market, where brokers aggressively compete for your business and dozens of websites allow the home buyer to search for homes by location and price, view photos and learn about the property in detail. Why not a marketplace for brownfields?

There have been many successful CCLR workshops within the past month! Read more about CCLR's showcase of a new workshop format we’re using, as well as what was learned at the Back to Business Workshops that took place last week in Los Angeles, Brea, Riverside, El Centro and San Diego.

CCLR's Jean Hamerman attended the 7th annual Brownfield of the Northeast Conference and shares with us her notes about the afternoon's plenary session featuring guest speakers from Hoboken, NJ and Copenhagen.  

CCLR's Jean Hamerman attended the 7th annual Brownfield Coalition of the Northeast conference and shares her notes from the morning plenary session with us.

Eligible projects must be directly or indirectly related to the environmental impact of the modification of an existing transportation facility or construction of a new transportation facility, The EEM Program encourages projects that produce multiple benefits which reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase water use efficiency, reduce risks from climate change impacts, and demonstrate collaboration with local, state and community entities.

Application Deadline: Tuesday, July 12, 2016

The California Association for Local Economic Development (CALED) is holding their 36th Annual Conference, Fresh: Ideas, Perspectives, Directions, at the South San Francisco Conference Center on April 26-28, 2016. Join CCLR at these two workshops: Brownfields: Legal Tools for Revitalizing Valuable Land and Economic Tools for Brownfields to learn about the basic legal tools and  economic incentives  to transform underused properties into facilities and businesses that generate jobs, tax revenue, and contribute to their communities again. 

On March 21, CCLR had the pleasure of attending the grand opening of Mural—the first residential building of the MacArthur Transit Village pioneered by BRIDGE Housing. CCLR's partnership with BRIDGE Housing and ongoing support of the project over the years has precipitated over $37 million in grant funding. And while the project has been over a decade in the making it has finally paid off. The complex has been named a "model" for the creation of dense, transit-rich and inclusive communities. With the development of more units currently underway, it can only get better and we at CCLR are thrilled to have been a part of it!

Hear from Molly Feldick, Bornfields Coordinator of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska's Environmental Protection Department about her experience with the Technical Assistance to Brownfields (TAB) program and her recent collabotation with the Center for Creative Land Recycling, Kansas State University, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference this past February in Portland Oregon. CCLR put together two sessions for the conference on the TAB program and resources available for land recycling.

The Center for Creative Land Recycling, in partnershp with the the U.S. EPA and California State agencies will be holding a series of workshops in Southern California aimed to provide attendees with an overview of the process of recycling land and reusing vacant, abandoned, blighted, and contaminated properties. 

The California enacted the Land Reuse & Revitalization Act (CLRRA) provides immunity to innocent and prospective landowners for pre-existing contamination for which they were not responsible. While the Act is set to expire next year, State Senator Robert Hertzberg (D - Los Angeles) has introduced SB 820, which would remove CLRRA’s sunset date, enabling this important program to remain available to community developers in perpetuity. CCLR has conducted a summary study of sites that are likely eligible to be cleaned up under CLRRA but are currently not moving forward. CCLR identified 2,355 currently stalled cleanup sites that could benefit from the proposed removal of CLRRA’s sunset and identified that these blighted properties have been languishing, on average, for over 9.6 years, depressing surrounding property values around them and posing potential risks to human health and the environment. Removing CLRRA’s sunset means potential purchasers of these sites could use CLRRA to gain a degree of enhanced certainty regarding cleanup requirements, project timeline, and long term liability. This would hasten the sites’ transformation from neighborhood eyesores to community assets, generating jobs, boosting the local tax base, and producing much needed housing.