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Subjects › Environment › Brownfields & Brownfield Redevelopment
Updated 04/2011

Brownfields & Brownfield Redevelopment

Contents

Introduction

A brownfield is an abandoned, idled, or underused property where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by the presence or potential presence of contamination. They are difficult to redevelop because of the need for environmental assessment and the potential liability issues involved. A property owner may find it more advantageous to leave the property abandoned because development or sale may require a costly clean-up or spur a lawsuit.

But this is changing. State and federal environmental laws and policies over the past few years have been focusing on how to turn brownfields into opportunities for investment. Redeveloped brownfield sites attract new business, create jobs, improve the neighborhood, and increase the local tax base. The regulatory changes include defining legal liabilities (eliminating some potential lawsuits), extending financial protections to lenders involved with brownfield redevelopment, and offering grants, low interest loans and tax incentives for clean-up of contaminated sites.

Local governments can take a pro-active role in redeveloping brownfield properties. Local governments can coordinate funding, assume some financial responsibility for site remediation costs, offer incentives, and facilitate permit processes and communication between private developers and state/federal environmental regulatory agencies. Local government property acquisition is one of the key tools needed to facilitate brownfields redevelopment. Some local governments have acquired brownfield properties and handled the redevelopment on their own (such as Tacoma and their Thea Foss Waterway development project).

Growth management laws, risingtransportation costs, and escalating real estate prices are making close-in brownfield properties a more attractive option. And redevelopment offers improvements to communities in the form of rejuvenated neighborhoods, businesses and public ways. For more complete information on Brownfield Redevelopment we recommend a visit to the Washington State Department of Ecology Brownfield Program, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or contact the MRSC Library.

If you have information to share (such as ordinances, issue papers, policies) from your city or county on this topic, or are aware of other web sites that we should link to, please contact Sue Enger, MRSC Planning Consultant, at senger@mrsc.org , or simply press the "Comments" button to contact MRSC in general via E-mail. We also invite any suggestions you may have for improvements and additional topics.

Brownfields Related Laws & Rules

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs).

Guidebooks/publications/Reports/Documents

Funding Sources

Related MRSC Webpages

External Links to Brownfields Webpages