By Ignacio Dayrit, Director of Programs

May 17, 2018

On March 31st, the 23rd Street neighborhood in Richmond came together at Richmond Union High School to reimagine the possibilities for the 23rd Street corridor, also known as Calle 23. Just a short walk from the Richmond BART and Amtrak Stations, Richmond Civic Center and the Richmond Greenway, Calle 23 is ripe with redevelopment opportunities.  

On March 11, CCLR hosted our second Bike Tour of Bay Area Brownfields. For this tour we focused our attention towards the island of Alameda. Program Assistant Sam Hare Steig led a herd of 24 cyclists to three unique redevelopment sites. The group toured each site and talked with the local developers behind the projects.

Raise awareness of your property for redevelopment while you perfect your pitch to developers and real estate brokers.

Not only are the folks at New Belgium Brewing Company the gifted brewers and creators of the delicious “Fat Tire” Ale, but they are also quite the environmentalists. When the Brewing Company began searching for a location for a second brewery in 2009, the Company established a set of criteria for their site, one of which was that the site had to be a brownfield. New Belgium purchased the 18-acre property in Asheville, North Carolina in 2012 and in May 2016, opened the doors to its second brewery.

Everyone in Puerto Rico wants a better quality of life for themselves and their children. For many, that includes more resilient infrastructure, continued cleanup, and reconstruction after the September 2017 hurricanes.  Puerto Rico’s economic insolvency makes these matters all the more challenging as financial tools and knowhow can be as scarce as clean water. Almost five months after the climate disasters, hundreds of thousands of homes are still without basic utilities. To fill the void, the Center for Creative Land Recycling (CCLR), along with local and national partners, set out to create an action plan to answer critical questions about infrastructure financing, especially for the PR127 Corridor.

When is soil just “dirt”, when is it a waste, and when is it a resource? The answer may be in the eye of the beholder. Given the length of time it takes to create 1 cm3 of topsoil (estimated at 200-400 years), the current approach to managing excess soil at redevelopment sites in the United State (U.S.) merits further analysis.

The “Best of Brewedway” mobile workshop, co-hosted by CCLR at the New Partners for Smart Growth conference, highlighted the roles that cities and developers play in promoting smart infill development on brownfield sites.

The “Best of Brewedway” mobile workshop, co-hosted by CCLR at the New Parterns for Smart Growth Conference, highlighted the roles that cities and developers play in promoting smart infill development on brownfield sites.

Emeryville, California is an ongoing brownfields laboratory. During the recent New Partners for Smart Growth conference, as CCLR’s Director of Programs and former brownfields manager for the city, I joined other Emeryville staff to visit some of the city’s redeveloped sites.  Blessed with an ideal location and forward-thinking leadership, Emeryville continues to revitalize from what was once called the “dirtiest/rottenest little town on the Pacific Coast/west of the Mississippi” and “the armpit of the Bay Area.” Partnerships helped bridge that infamous past with the model for brownfields redevelopment that many seek to emulate. The city maintains a homey, working class feel as it welcomes demographically diverse new residents, and as businesses lead in innovative industries.