New England Remediation Loan Program Launched

Business Development Corporation of New England (previously known as MassBusiness) recently announced the launch of a new program to provide financing for the cleanup and development of brownfields throughout New England.

“With extensive regulatory restrictions and ‘Safety and Soundness’ considerations, many banks continue to struggle with lending on environmentally impaired sites. Our hope is that this new program will create a bridge to help advance development projects involving an environmental remediation component, to the point where conventional financing sources can be more readily accessed,” said Kenneth J. Smith, president of The BDC.

Loans will range from $500,000 to $2 million per project and can be used to fund remediation activities and a wide range of other pre-development and development costs and expenses on environmentally impaired sites. The program arose in response to a gap in financing that presently exists in the marketplace.

“Our goal is to simply make an additional financing mechanism available in the marketplace to fund these projects,” said Smith. “Our expectation is that once remediation activities at a given location are completed, conventional financing sources will be more receptive to providing permanent financing for these sites. This will allow us to recycle the funds committed to this program faster and assist with financing a greater number of projects.”

Financing under the program will be available to both responsible parties and innocent owners. “It’s not our concern how a property became contaminated,” said Smith. “That is for the regulators to address. Our only concern is that when someone is willing and able to conduct an environmental cleanup, as few obstacles as possible stand in their way.”BFN

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