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South Dakota Brownfield Project Under Way
By Nathan Johnson
No vacancy. That’s what city officials hope to see as a result of the
brownfield redevelopment project in downtown Yankton, South Dakota.
An important step toward accomplishing that goal was taken recently when Eisenbraun
& Associates, a local engineering firm, began constructing a new building
on a site once occupied by Jensen Scrap Metal.
“Now we actually have a private investment occurring on a site that was
previously identified as being unavailable for redevelopment,” said Dave
Mingo, Yankton’s Community Development Director. “We’ve got
somebody putting private money on a site that would have been vacant.”
Mingo calls the building project the first real success story of Yankton’s
brownfields project.
A 40-acre portion of southeast Yankton has been assessed as part of the brownfield
program during the past two years. The city has applied for a $200,000 brownfields
grant to clean up the area that houses Jensen Scrap Metal. The city bought the
land earlier this year, and the scrap metal company has agreed to vacate the
land this winter.
Dan Eisenbraun, president of Eisenbraun & Associates, said he was proud
to be a part of redeveloping the area.
“We’re very much interested in helping downtown Yankton continue
to advance,” he said. “The redevelopment of the brownfield site
is an important part of that. It’s not a very attractive area at the present
time. But if you have a little vision and look ahead, we foresee that that area
will definitely become an attractive part of the community.”
The company was looking to expand beyond its downtown Yankton location due to
space limitations. The new $275,000 satellite building it hopes to move into
early in 2005 will house office space for the company’s surveyors and
storage space for vehicles.
Development of the property has added some extra costs for site preparation
but Eisenbraun said it was worth it.
“I don’t think that it’s that much of an impediment to develop
on this property,” he said. “The concerns they had for contamination
are really quite minimal. I don’t think there’s anything there that
we were concerned about.”
Eisenbraun is confident enough in the site that he is putting extra space in
the new building so that a complementary business can rent it out.
“We’re putting a little extra investment into the building just
to make it look a little nicer,” Eisenbraun said. “We have great
hope that it will develop into a nice area.”
Excerpted with permission from the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan.