On a scorching hot day in June 2009, a team from Duke-Hemisphere Redevelopment visited a hulking 1.5-million square foot Delphi Automotive plant near Columbus, Ohio. Walking through the plant was like a journey back in time. The dimly lit manufacturing facility had a noticeably sweet and sticky odor from nearly 67 years of intensive manufacturing activity conducted on the heavily-worn wood block flooring. Like most factories of this vintage, the plant’s sole remaining caretaker accompanied our team on this voyage through the cavernous main manufacturing facilities, now idled and no longer humming with the sound of production and the sweat of laborers toiling to meet demanding production schedules. Quite the contrary. Hard hit by the rapid decline in the American automotive industry, Delphi Automotive was on the eve of a bankruptcy filing. Consequently, this formerly thriving facility, which once supported thousands of workers and their families, appeared to be just another major brownfield destined to linger in the portfolio of a bankruptcy estate.

According to William J. DeBoer of Duke-Hemisphere, “At the time of our site visit in June 2009, the property had been on the market for a number of years – yet no one was able to work through the significant challenges, both environmentally and from a development perspective, to make a redevelopment plan feasible. While this 123-acre site had a number of positive attributes, including the property’s proximity to a major interstate, the vacant plant also posed a number of redevelopment challenges, given the existing market conditions.” The Duke-Hemisphere team engaged Hull & Associates, Inc. to evaluate the existing environmental due diligence and to help quantify the scope of potential environmental hurdles. According to Craig A. Kasper, Hull’s CEO, “Like many closed automotive manufacturing facilities, and while each plant has its own story, experience helps the team focus quickly on the core issues to quantify relevant environmental risks.” ...

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