What Does the Future Hold For The Brownfield Market?

By Robert V. Colangelo

This special Brownfields 2005 conference issue presents our analysis of the brownfield market and trends that we see on the horizon. Although we have no monopoly on prognosticating the future, we have been the only publication tracking the market for more than nine years and have built a great network of experts to provide input on this growing market.

In the Beginning
The brownfield industry has come a long way in just over a decade. A handful of pioneering entrepreneurial developers and investors can be credited with starting this market. In the late 1980s, the private sector began to buy and invest in the first brownfields, with the driver being generating a return on investment through an arbitrage — buying (impaired property) low and selling (cleaned property) high.

Momentum began in the public sector when the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), led by Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, put the issue on the political map. In 1993, USCM met with then-EPA Administrator Carol Browner to discuss the impacts brownfields had on their communities and mechanisms for restoring economic vitality to their blighted inner cites. EPA reacted with the issuance of federal grant money, and the rest is history.

Fast-forward to today — what you see is a highly specialized industry that has begun to mature. Further indication of a maturing market is the fact that we even have our own federal legislation — the Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act signed by President Bush in January 2002.

While the brownfield market is still far from becoming a mature industry, we predict a bright future and continued growth for the next 12 months — our crystal ball gets cloudy beyond that point.