New York has a reputation, and usually well-deserved, as a place with many opinions. So it’s not much of a surprise that the seven-years of debate that preceded the passage of a state brownfields law was filled with much contention, shouting matches, and competing press releases.

Concerned about the inability of various interests to work together, a consortium of philanthropic foundations convened a working group—comprised of developers, community leaders, environmentalists, environmental justice advocates, bankers and industry. 

 

It was 1998 when the group first met at the Pocantico Conference Center in Westchester County, and the discussions have become the stuff of legend around New York State. It’s a story that is particularly worth telling today as it was here that the roots of the brownfields area-wide approach—now being piloted by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 23 communities across the country—were laid. Understanding this history sheds light on how the area-wide approach is a paradigm shift that can reverse the downward spiral of disinvestment and decay and create value. And it demonstrates the importance of providing resources for local leadership and authentic community engagement.

 

The Pocantico sessions eventually produced draft legislation, which was shared with state lawmakers. By the time the state Legislature passed a brownfields law in 2003, whole sections of what had originally emerged at Pocantico were part of the package and became known as the Brownfields Opportunity Areas (BOA) program.

Today, BOA, which is a recognized success, is charging ahead with $34 million in state BOA grants supporting more than 100 communities around New York that are actively engaged in planning for their revitalized futures. Several dozen more are ready to join in, just as soon as funding becomes available.

Success starts with Leadership

Two leaders of the Pocantico process were Jody Kass and Mathy Stanislaus. Kass, who at the time worked at a housing nonprofit and was responsible for coordinating construction of 1,000 new affordable housing units annually on city-owned land, came to the table with a development orientation. Stanislaus, an engineer and lawyer, was rooted in the environmental justice movement, and active in the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance (NYC-EJA).

 

It was the synergies of competing interests finding a common ground that produced the BOA area-wide approach. Through BOA, revitalization is focused on entire neighborhoods and clusters of brownfields within those neighborhoods, including the conditions fueling abandonment and decay. It is based not on what is there now, or what the real estate market might otherwise attract or resist, but on what the community wants and needs, grounded by what is feasible.

 

In this approach, developers see the potential for new real estate projects and investment opportunities. BOA makes the pre-development process more efficient by establishing re-use plans supported by the community, which should also reduce lawsuits. Environmental justice advocates were interested in ensuring that noxious uses were not the primary future use for brownfield sites in poor communities of color. By looking at the area as a whole, the most productive, innovative and appropriately scaled end uses will be planned, creating new economic anchors and helping put properties back on the tax rolls

 

It was this commonality of interests around the BOA program that resulted in Kass and Stanislaus continuing their collaboration in the creation of the nonprofit organization New Partners for Community Revitalization (NPCR) in 2001. Now, 10 years after its creation, NPCR is New York’s leading BOA advocacy group. Still based primarily in New York City, NPCR works with community groups, nonprofit and for-profit developers, environmental justice organizations, and community lenders.

NPCR runs a technical assistance program for brownfield redevelopment projects in the city, which informs NPCR’s state and federal policy initiatives. Kass, the organization’s executive director, serves on several state and local boards and commissions. Stanislaus left NPCR two years ago to become the EPA’s Assistant Administrator in charge of the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (OSWER), making him the Obama Administration’s leading figure in national brownfields policy.

 

Low-income voices heard
The authentic community engagement that is the backbone of the BOA process was conceived on a parallel track with the development of the area-wide approach. It was during the seven years of policy debate that preceded the 2003 state Brownfields Law that community based organizations (CBOs) from New York City’s marginalized low-income communities of color fought for a more comprehensive and transparent approach, one that would give them a seat at the decision-making table.

These CBOs were fed up with top-down land use decision-making that had resulted in the siting of a disproportionate number of incinerators, waste transfer stations, and power plants in their communities. Many of these communities already bore more than their fair share of the waste management and other heavy industrial activities that were causing widening health disparities.

The orientation of these groups was informed by the recognition that the existing “one-parcel-at-a-time” strategy was not resulting in the affordable housing, open space, and job generating end uses desired by the community; and that the existence of multiple abandoned and decaying brownfield sites were instead inviting more dirty or stigmatizing uses such as garbage transfer stations, sewage treatment plants, and fossil fuel power plants.

With BOA, the CBOs were determined to build in mechanisms that would empower local community leaders by providing them with a meaningful role in decision-making and substantial resources for planning and project implementation. One hallmark that emerged from this intensive public policy debate is government funding to support the participation of community representatives over a sustained period of time..

 

“Our communities already faced more than our fair share of waste management, energy generation and industrial facilities that were causing widening health disparities, including record rates of asthma and blocking our economic growth,” says Eddie Bautista, NYCEJA’s executive director, and a former official in the office of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The BOA approach represents one of the true achievements of the Environmental Justice Movement. “Here in Brooklyn, where I live, BOA has allowed real community groups to have a say in their futures,” Bautista says.

 

Indeed, at its annual New York City Brownfields Forum last December, NPCR was joined by community leaders along with representatives of New York State and city government and the Obama Administration to launch the NYC BOA Community Resilience Initiative East River Industrial Corridor Pilot.

 

Pilot represents synergy
The East River Pilot, conceived by NPCR, is the next generation of the area-wide approach. It will link two neighborhoods plagued by concentrations of brownfields – Sunset Park and the Newtown Creek area—in an inter-agency, cross governmental partnership funded by the BOA program. The pilot integrates climate adaptation and community resilience strategies, environmental justice policy analysis and strategies to facilitate green jobs and sustainable manufacturing through area-wide planning.
 

As similar problems emerge, research and analysis is being shared across the Corridor, with the goal of developing more efficient and coordinated implementation strategies, particularly with respect to common infrastructure concerns. To mark the synergistic BOA approach, instead of a ribbon cutting, the kick-off featured the tying of a green ribbon to symbolize what participants consider to be a model community-city-state-federal smart growth collaboration.

 

NPCR’s success reflects its ability to successfully blend disparate interests. How many times have developers come into an area with big plans to rehabilitate and develop a site, only to run into tough community opposition? From a developer’s point of view, wouldn’t it make more economic sense to propose projects that reflect a clearly articulated redevelopment plan crafted by local residents?

Rather than a top-down approach, planning from the ground up greatly increases the odds that a project will move quickly through the permitting process, with widespread support from neighbors, community leaders and politicians. This is one reason NPCR is able to mobilize and draw support from environmental justice leaders, developers, bankers, insurance professionals and groups concerned about smart growth principles. It’s this diversity of stakeholders that gives NPCR its unique character.

 

Now in its 10th year, NPCR is poised to grow in new and exciting directions. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has initiated a series of Regional Economic Development Councils (REDCs), tasked to develop a regional approach to job creation and economic revitalization. NPCR, which is serving on the strategies working group created by the New York City REDC, has already submitted 27 specific recommendations on how to accelerate economic development through BOAs. 

 

And, the organization has just launched a new membership drive, which will include a higher profile in both New York and nationally through a series of workshops, roundtables and webinars designed to increase understanding of the area-wide approach and the advantages it brings to everyone involved in revitalizing neglected neighborhoods.