Eric Williams
President and Chief Executive Officer, Frontier Renewal, Denver
As the head of Frontier Renewal, a specialty real estate company focused on the acquisition, remediation and repositioning of brownfields, Eric Williams is a nationally recognized expert in brownfields. His 22-year career in the field includes all aspects of redevelopment: identifying and qualifying potential brownfield projects, determining best and highest use, managing environmental risk and planning land use, along with entitlements, public incentive programs, public and private financing and overall deal structuring.

With a degree in geology, Williams made a natural transition from environmental cleanup work in the late 1980s to "the real estate side of the equation," he says.

"I like the challenge of it," he says. "These [brownfield] projects require a lot of creative thought. . . . One of the things we're proud of is that we offer very customized solutions to [clients'] needs to make their projects work."

Williams provides strategic directions, leads the Frontier board of directors and translates board direction into management action, in addition to representing the company nationally as a member and officer of brownfield and real estate organizations. The company's latest project is an 85-acre former paper mill site in Parchment, Mich., just outside of Kalamazoo, where Frontier will manage the environmental liabilities, remediate the site, re-entitle the property, and facilitate the development.

Williams previously served as vice president for Continental Environmental Redevelopment Financial, a specialty lender to the brownfield industry. Before that, his work as vice president and national director of property development for ARCADIS included creating the business model for the company's brownfield program and overseeing all aspects of it.

Madeleine Kellam
Brownfields Coordinator, Georgia Environmental Protection Division, Department of Natural Resources, Atlanta
Madeleine Kellam leads Georgia's brownfields program, which is designed to encourage voluntary cleanup, reuse and redevelopment of contaminated properties around the state. Kellam, who has a background in groundwater research and environmental investigation, played a key role in getting the program off the ground after the state legislature created it in 2002.

"Early on, we sat down with real estate development professionals and talked about what it would take for them to voluntarily enter into a relationship with a state regulatory agency for a site cleanup," she says. "We learned immediately that we needed to make decisions . . . in a time frame that would not cost them money."

Kellam spent the first year working with the University of Georgia to do an outreach campaign about the brownfields program throughout the state, conducting workshops for local governments. Today, the brownfields program has received 300 applications and counting, and "it's been a very, very satisfying professional experience," says Kellam. "Our state statute is absolutely brilliant. I'm seeing more cleanups in brownfields in the past few years than I ever saw working with regulatory-based programs."

Kellam says she would like to see brownfield development become "part and parcel" of economic development throughout Georgia. "We've been successful in getting more brownfield grants into our state," she says, but it can be challenging. She encourages her staff to think beyond providing cleanup expertise to "become more knowledgeable about various sources of grant funding," she says.

Kellam, a registered professional geologist, is also the author of numerous professional publications documenting research on the geology and groundwater resources of Georgia.

Jenny Redlin
Principal, Partner Energy, El Segundo, Calif.
With more than 10 years in the environmental consulting industry, Jenny Redlin has served as an environmental scientist, project manager, or executive senior author on more than 5,000 real estate transactions. She has extensive experience managing all aspects of due diligence--specializing in environmental due diligence-for national and local clients including residential and commercial developers and financial institutions.

"I really enjoy the intersection of science with commercial real estate," she says. "I've learned a lot about how my piece of the puzzle fits into the greater context of the overall deal that's happening."

Redlin says she started her career doing biological assessments, usually for the first-time development of raw land. "That segued for me as a scientist into development deals not just for raw land, but for urban areas that had had past development," she says.

Redlin's work has involved testing soil, soil gas, and groundwater in real estate transactions, as well as under the supervision of state and federal regulators. Among her specialties is guiding landowners and prospective purchasers through the process of selling or acquiring an environmentally challenged site. Her experience in environmental compliance monitoring and biological consulting included work with state and local agencies such as Santa Barbara County Parks, California Department of Fish and Game, California Public Utilities Commission, and Los Angeles Water and Sanitation.

Redlin was named Real Estate Southern California Woman of Influence in 2008 for her role in the area's commercial real estate transactions, and she has been designated a 2009 California Mortgage Bankers Association Future Leader.

Sara Harris
Attorney and shareholder, Rutter Hobbs & Davidoff, Los Angeles
Sara Harris represents numerous partnerships, limited liability companies and individuals in the purchase, sale and financing of large real estate projects throughout the United States, including brownfield sites.

"In one instance, we had a contaminated property where the prior owner, the seller, had already been involved with the cleanup process," she says. "What was taking place was the protection of our client—the buyer—so they wouldn't have liability for the property that was already contaminated." Her work has also included assisting a client with the purchase of a large industrial building that involved numerous environmental issues and a like-kind reverse exchange.

Harris says she likes encouraging clients who acquire real estate to go "green." "Since the 1970s I've been very much into the environmental movement," says Harris. "Today, there is more of an interest in looking at buying as well as building differently than in the past. . . . [With LEED certification], the brownfield becomes an asset to some degree."

Harris is a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, and she volunteers for Global Green USA, an arm of Green Cross International, which was created by Mikhail Gorbachev and promotes global climate change through green buildings and cities.

Although she has been an attorney for 26 years, Harris first spent eight years making her living as an artist. She moved into law after succeeding in recovering money that was owed to her by a bankrupt company, but still paints when she can. "I select art for the law firm [offices], and I have some of my paintings on the walls," she says.

Chris Nelson
National Partner, Brownfields, SCS Engineers, San Francisco Bay area
After more than seven years doing investigative work as an environmental consultant, Chris Nelson realized that just getting a site cleaned up wasn't enough for him.

"I found it frustrating that the process was so lengthy, and a lot of sites were not being put back into productive use," he says. "In school, I had a strong interest in city and regional planning, . . . When brownfields came around in the mid-1990s, it really piqued my interest."

Nelson left consulting to work with the Presidio in San Francisco, a former army base being cleaned up for use as an urban park, and then moved on to serve as a project director in the brownfields real estate development field. He evaluated dozens of properties nationwide for brownfields and real estate development potential, as well as directing brownfields development activities for several properties on the West Coast. His background includes working on properties regulated under CERCLA, RCRA, the Clean Water Act and numerous other federal and state environmental and hazardous waste cleanup regulations.

In 2009, Nelson joined SCS Engineers to lead company-wide efforts related to its Brownfields Strategic Initiative, developing strategic relationships with partners, service providers and clients, and assisting regional offices in brownfield projects.

"It's a challenging time, but we're staying involved in the market and fostering relationships with new clients," Nelson says. "One of our sub-initiatives that's very exciting is alternative energy [projects] on closed landfills. A win-win would be to couple a project that converts the landfill gas into energy as well as producing some solar arrays."

April Laliberte
Brownfield Specialist, Economic Vitality Division, city of Flagstaff, Ariz.
Working with private property owners who don't rely on grant funds is her newest, latest challenge, says April Laliberte, who joined the fledgling Brownfield Land Recycling Program in Flagstaff in 2005.

"In just the past couple of weeks, I've noticed people calling the program who are outside of the grant boundary, who are hearing about it from word of mouth," she says. "Now I'm taking the brownfield program in a totally new direction . . . opening doors to different aspects of the program that I've never considered before."

Laliberte came to Arizona from New Hampshire, where she worked in the state's Pollution Prevention Program doing water quality testing. She was initially hired as a brownfield assistant for the city of Flagstaff, and was quickly promoted to brownfield specialist to acquire and manage brownfield grants for the new program. A $200,000 EPA community-wide petroleum assessment grant and an $89,000 site assessment grant project from the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality are among the brownfield grants she has overseen.

Laliberte says Flagstaff also has received nearly $127,000 in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to help clean up environmental contamination on the city's Rio de Flag site, so that a major flood control project can be completed. "The Rio de Flag [project] is really important because it's going to lift two huge areas of town out of the flood plain," she says. "Those areas are challenged because of the FEMA floodplain building restrictions currently. Once it's lifted, people can start buying and selling again.”