Green a Reflection of Brown Practices

America loves an underdog and there is none better than a brownfield, a vacant, blighted contaminated property sitting idle and unproductive, just waiting for that gregarious American spirit to take up its cause.

Shunned until recently by the financial, real estate and development communities for the safer pastures of greenfields, the brownfield cause has been taken up by idealists within government, law, engineering, and business— deal junkies seeking that adrenaline rush found in high-risk, high-reward transactions.

For a while, brownfields looked like they would finally get their moment in the sun as a wave of feature stories on successful redevelopments began to appear in newspapers and magazines. But fame is fickle, and brownfields returned to their place in the shadows, eclipsed by all things green. So fashionable is going green these days that it is hard to turn on the TV, listen to the radio, pick up a newspaper, or visit a Web site that is not espousing the benefits of green building design, energy conservation, fuel efficiency, alternative energy sources, and carbon footprint reduction.

What the media has not covered is the connection between green and brown or the fact that the brownfield industry was green long before being green was cool.

Question: What’s better, building a LEED designated platinum building in the middle of a greenfield or constructing a new building on an infill contaminated property?
Answer: Building a LEED designated Platinum building on a brownfield.

Green is a reflection of what brown has always done, but we as an industry have done a poor job of communicating the benefits of redevelopment in an easy to understand, concise message that laypeople can comprehend.

Going green is easy to understand by the public: “replace your old light bulb with a new long-lasting light bulb and save money while helping the environment.” Brownfield development, on the other hand, is very technical and complicated. The complexities of the redevelopment process, the acronyms we use and our technical jargon make it difficult to explain.

It is evident that we need to develop the elevator speech, to be able to tell our story in a sound bite: “we recycle the earth, rebuild infrastructure and improve economies.”

As our market matures, we are presented with a tremendous opportunity to expand beyond our technical roots and spread the word to an even broader coalition of interests. These range from the individuals and entities that work on the social, environmental and economic issues that fall under the sustainability banner, to the real estate professionals who work in the major market sectors—industrial, commercial retail and office, and residential—who reposition these properties for new use.

Brownfield News understands the importance of getting the message out and connecting the dots between brownfields and green to show the cost benefit of brownfield redevelopment. So now we challenge you, our readers, to do the same. Present a brownfield redevelopment into which you have incorporated the most advanced green building and sustainable initiatives. We’ll make it simple to enter. We ask that you submit electronically a one page summary describing your brownfield (location, type of contamination and what sustainable initiatives were implemented in the design and construction) and include a before and after picture.

Send your completed submission to robertc@brownfieldnews.com. All applications must be received by December 1, 2008, and only fully completed projects are eligible. One winner will be selected in January 2009 and awarded the soon-to-be prestigious Brown-Green Award.

A little sun goes a long way toward turning brown to green. So let’s put brownfields back into the light and reflect the positive changes and advances we have been making all along.

Enjoy the read!

Robert Colangelo
Publisher
robertc@brownfieldnews.com