Paul Curran,
Senior Executive Vice President, Axio Power & Apex Wind Energy
Curran and his colleagues at Axio Power and Apex Wind have developed some of the world's leading brownfield renewable energy projects. These include the 20 Megawatt Steel Winds Project located on an abandoned steel mill in Lackawanna, N.Y., the 2-megawatt Fort Carson solar project located in Colorado, as well as two operating wind farms at oil refineries in Texas and in the Netherlands.Curran was the founder of BQ Energy which recently merged into Apex Wind and Axio Power, which continues to develop commercial wind and solar projects at brownfields across the nation. Prior to founding BQ Energy in 2003, Curran developed conventional energy facilities in the U.S. and Europe for Texaco and Chevron. Curran holds degrees in engineering from Columbia University and an MBA from Marist College. He is a registered Professional Engineer in New York State. "Reusing brownfield sites for renewable energy makes a tremendous amount of sense. There are assets such as roads and power lines already in existence and the use of renewable energy can really change the entire image of an industrial site. The redevelopment can also make an impact to power bills and carbon footprint," said Curran.

Pat Pontoriero,
P.G., Vice President, Ohio Valley Area Manager, MACTEC Engineering and Consulting, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Pontoriero has been working in both Western N.Y. and northwest Pennsylvania with industrial development corporations and private clients to remediate and revitalize former industrial sites.  According to Pontoriero, "while technical and regulatory approach is obviously important, it is also equally important to forge a cooperative atmosphere among the key stakeholders, including citizens, regulators, politicians, and property owners, to put these former industrials sites back into productive reuse." Pontoriero goes on to say that "New York State's Brownfields Cleanup Program and Pennsylvania's Act 2 Program provide real incentives for both current property owners and the redevelopment community to focus on reuse of existing sites rather than development of greenfields sites." 
Pontoriero, who earned a Master of Science degree in Geology from the University of Pittsburgh and a Bachelor of Science degree in Earth Science from Gannon University, has over 28 years of experience. During the past 15 years, his practice has focused on brownfields redevelopment. "It is extremely satisfying to clean up a blighted site and see new construction and job creation," he said. Pontoriero is currently playing a major role in the cleanup and redevelopment of the former Buffalo Color Site in South Buffalo, working with Jon Williams of South Buffalo Development and Honeywell.

David P. Flynn,
Esq., Partner, Phillips Lytle LLP, Buffalo
Flynn notes one of his greatest accomplishments as being involved in the Steel Winds project, an urban brownfield wind farm in Lackawanna, N.Y. With obtaining the required legal and regulatory approvals in approximately 90 days, it is a testament to Flynn's "speed to market" project  development approach. "I approached the project as a wind project that just happened to be on a brownfield site. In this way, I was able to proceed down parallel paths that ultimately led to the benefits of the brownfield program, but did not hold up getting the project to market."  Steel Winds sits on 40 acres of a former Bethlehem Steel manufacturing plant. The towers stand on slag dumped into Lake Erie from over 100 years of steel production, and the eight wind turbines are today generating a combined 20 megawatts of energy.

With that project well in hand, and moving into phase two, Flynn is now focusing on a number of other brownfield projects that will ultimately turn brown into green. One of them is the former Buffalo Color Corp. Plant, located in Buffalo, N.Y. along the Buffalo River, it's a former chemical manufacturing plant that was accepted into the New York State Brownfield Cleanup Program, and is slated for commercial and industrial redevelopment. 

Jon M. Williams,
Founder, Ontario Specialty Contracting, Inc. (OSC), Buffalo
Alongside of OSC's contracting services, Williams has pursued brownfield re-development projects that leverage OSC's core competencies. The first of these projects was the Dowcraft brownfield re-development in 1998, the first brownfield re-development for a manufacturing facility in New York state. The project involved the purchase, remediation, demolition and construction of a new 180,000 square foot, state - of - the - art manufacturing plant for Dowcraft Industries. The development resulted in a $6 million investment in the site, and anchored Dowcraft and its' 150 manufacturing jobs in the Jamestown, N.Y. community.

Another industrial brownfield re-development of note is the SGL Carbon site. The graphite electrode manufacturer had closed its' Niagara Falls, N.Y. facility in 2002. The site comprised some 40 acres and over 800,000 square feet of structures. There were various challenges ranging from environmental issues to almost half of the structures being in an advanced state of disrepair. OSC, through its subsidiary NFB Carbon Properties, LLC purchased the site in 2005.After almost 18 months of environmental cleanup and site re - configuration, "we were left with about 300,000 square feet of high-end manufacturing space," said Williams.