For over one hundred and fifty years, American cities and towns lit their homes, factories and boulevards with manufactured gas. Replaced by natural gas, manufactured gas was phased out by the mid-twentieth century and American utility companies, municipalities and private property owners now face the challenge of reusing sites across the country that formerly housed manufactured gas plants. While questions of liability, remediation and development potential create many questions, cooperation among property owners, utilities, regulatory bodies and developers points to promising futures for many of these sites. In addition, because many of these plants are in the midst of prime real estate, they have great potential as economically viable brownfield developments.

Manufactured gas plants were first developed in Great Britain, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, in the early 1800s and the technology quickly spread to the Unites States—the first manufactured gas plant (MGP) in the United States was built in Baltimore in 1816 and by the late 1850s there were approximately 300 companies operating across the country. This technology took hold because it provided much brighter light than tallow or oil lamps and was later even preferred to kerosene lighting. ...

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