NORWICH –  Even if the Brownfield Opportunities Area Program only jumpstarts development of one or two underutilized or abandoned sites in the City of Norwich, it can still be considered a success, one city official said.
Statewide, however, Gov. Eliot Spitzer says the brownfield program has been a “failure,” claiming hefty amounts of state subsidies have gone to multi-million dollar projects that didn’t need any help from taxpayers.
Norwich isn’t at the redevelopment stage, yet. With the help of a $37,000 grant, the city is still identifying areas that may or may not even be Brownfield sites.
What is a brownfield site? According the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a brownfield is a property with the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant which may complicate its expansion, redevelopment, or reuse.
The city has currently identified 20 potential brownfield spots east of Broad Street. Sites include a few areas near Hosbach Trail along the Chenango River and a property next to the P&C grocery store.
The city hired Shelter Planning, an Albany-based grant administrator, to help them develop a focus area, map out the potential brownfield properties in that area and act as a go-between for potential brownfield property owners with the state as the bureaucratic process moves forward.
“It’s an attempt to evaluate some of these underutilized properties to find out whether or not there are environmental issues,” said city Planning and Community Development Specialist Todd Dreyer. “If this helps us redevelop a couple of nice pieces of property, that would be enough to make this project a success.”
In the next month or month and half, Shelter representative Scott LaMountain said the company will present a draft at a public meeting of the area and properties that will be nominated for the second phase of grant funding, which provides money to conduct in-depth market impact and reuse feasibility studies.
“Regardless of the final outcome,” said LaMountain, “we’re providing a planning framework for the City of Norwich for the future.”
Overall, it will allow the city to know what can and what can’t be reused, and plan around that, LaMountain said.
Along those lines, Dreyer said the goal is to not only clean-up and redevelop potentially contaminated sites, but to give property owners what equals a clean bill of health for sites that aren’t contaminated, but were once thought to be.
“It gives them the peace-of-mind knowing they can develop or sell a property knowing it doesn’t have any environmental issues associated with it,” Dreyer said.
When clean-up and redevelopment plans for brownfields actually move forward – the city still has a few phases to go – Spitzer’s says he’s going to propose legislation that will make sure projects that actually need funding across the state get it.
“This program was enacted in 2003 to provide incentives to remediate contaminated land for new development. However, the program’s formula is broken, and – as a result – it too often provides massive taxpayer subsidies for development that would have happened anyway,” Spitzer said in his recent State of Upstate address. “For example, we don’t need to be using millions of taxpayer dollars to underwrite a luxury condominium project in Westchester while 3,000 acres of brownfields in Rochester await investment.”