Tulsa, OK
The former Evans-Fintube industrial buildings in north Tulsa are vacant. It's one of those would-be projects that's regarded as having both challenges and potential, according to Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett, regarding the 25-acre site.
The mayor said in October that the property has the potential to be a great asset to the city, contributing to the tax rolls and the business community, according to the Tulsa World. “We just have to get it there.”
The city is in the process of finalizing a north Tulsa brownfields strategic action plan, funded with a $175,000 U.S. EPA grant that includes six targeted properties, including the city-owned Evans-Fintube complex. Tulsa was one of 23 cities across the country and the only one in Oklahoma to be part of the EPA pilot program.
Source: Tulsa World
Norwich, Conn.
Bolstered by the completion of its first-ever brownfields study, Norwich leaders are preparing to apply for nearly $1 million in federal grants to clean up polluted properties across the city, Mayor Peter Nystrom said in late October .
The mayor remarked that there are no more green areas to develop, and that “we’ve got to go back to what we were, which is a city that evolved along a river. We’ve got to get these properties cleaned up so they can get put back into active use,” according to The Norwich Bulletin.
The report, issued to the City Council earlier this month, identifies three of the city’s 133 brownfields as the highest priorities for remediation: the Chestnut Street Mills, the south side of Ponemah Mills and the Shipping Street area.
One of the challenges to embark upon an ambitious cleanup program was identifying the brownfield inventory in the city, which would then help prioritize the areas of concentration.
According to the report, fully restoring and developing all three sites could add a combined $728,275 in tax revenue to the city and bring 1,261 new jobs. City leaders applied for federal brownfield clean-up grants last year, but were denied because there was no planning document that would enable regulators to see how development would occur.
Mayor Nystrom said the city will again ask this fall for
separate $200,000 Environmental Protection Agency grants for petroleum and brownfield
cleanup, plus another $500,000 to demolish structures on the sites. “EPA requires communities to have this, and it lines us up for future consideration of grants,” he said. “The purpose is to demonstrate you have some logical and well-thought processes in place,” the mayor told the Norwich Bulletin.
Marjorie Blizard, chairwoman of the city’s Redevelopment Agency and a member of the report’s steering committee, said the document, while not an action plan, holds significant promise in outlining realistic goals for the properties.
Source: Norwich Bulletin
Providence, R.I.
A nonprofit that promotes urban ecology has transformed a contaminated lot in Providence into a nursery to grow trees that will help increase the tree cover in some of the city’s poorest — and least green — neighborhoods.
Groundwork Providence this month marked the official opening in the city’s Elmwood section of the Hope Tree Nursery, an inviting green space amid a sea of red brick in an industrial area that housed metal manufacturers.
The nursery, which sits on a brownfields site, was redeveloped by a crew with GroundCorp, a social enterprise of Groundwork Providence that provides on-the-job training and transitional employment to graduates of Groundwork’s environmental job-training programs. It eventually will have about 300 trees.
Groundwork Providence rents the parcel from Rhode Island Housing for $1 a year. The pilot project cost about $30,000, said Ray Perreault, director of Groundwork Providence’s Trees 2020 program, an initiative aimed at boosting the city’s tree cover. The money came from private and federal sources.
The 4,500-square-foot nursery contains 27 varieties ranging from sassafras and scrub oak to black walnut and hornbeam. Because no soil can be removed from the site, the trees are grown ‘‘pot in pot’’ — with one pot nestled in the ground and the other, holding the tree, placed inside it.
The first trees are expected to be removed for transplantation elsewhere in about three years. They'll be offered at low cost, perhaps less than $15, to residents in neighborhoods that don’t have a lot of trees, including Elmwood. The city is working with Trees 2020 to increase the canopy to 30 percent — which means planting a total of 40,000 trees.
Source: Boston.com
