POINT: Race, Poverty and Redevelopment

By Ken Brown

Across America, disadvantaged communities and neighborhoods have historically been marked by poverty, joblessness, injustice and lack of investment. These communities often suffer disproportionately from the impacts of contaminated properties. Several researchers have documented that people living in lower income communities and areas with higher percentages of people of color tend to reside in closer proximity to hazardous waste sites, industrial facilities releasing toxic pollutants and facilities using toxic chemicals in industrial production. These disadvantaged communities also tend to have more blighted areas, more abandoned gas stations and buildings, and more old warehouses and vacant industrial properties.

These brownfields threaten public health and the environment, spread neighborhood blight, discourage new investment and revitalization and contribute to the patterns of poverty and decline that plague disadvantaged communities. Often, the lack of economic vitality and the lack of local resources and capacity in these disadvantaged areas exacerbate these brownfield problems.

Turning Problems into Opportunities
However, there are a growing number of examples where disadvantaged communities have used brownfield tools and resources as the spark to redevelop blighted areas, create new economic opportunities and give renewed hope to their residents.

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the City of East Palo Alto, California, has not enjoyed the same economic prosperity as its neighboring communities. Well over 95 percent of the city’s population is people of color, and it continues to have the highest levels of poverty and unemployment in San Mateo County. For years, East Palo Alto was the region’s dumping ground, stuck with all of the county’s unwanted land uses, including salvage yards, a wood burning site and a chemical waste facility.

Today, the city has put in place an effective brownfield revitalization plan that has leveraged federal funding with private investment to create a new shopping center, a new IKEA store, the city’s first full service bank, new housing to serve all income levels and a new Four Seasons luxury hotel. These projects have created hundreds of new local jobs and housing opportunities and have increased the local tax base by tenfold.

The City of Saint Paul, Minnesota, is partnering with the Saint Paul Port Authority, local neighborhood groups and non-profit organizations on the Phalen Corridor redevelopment. This initiative is using brownfield tools and resources to revitalize Saint Paul’s East Side, which has high unemployment, significant poverty, declining home ownership and concerns about rising crime. In Spartanburg, South Carolina, a neighborhood-based initiative named the ReGenesis Environmental Justice Partnership has helped turn a dangerous former fertilizer factory and dump into hundreds of new affordable housing units, small businesses and the ReGenesis Community Health Center.

In the poor, minority hamlet of New Cassel, New York, (on Long Island) a coalition of neighborhood and church groups is partnering with the local government and federal agencies to bring $100 million of mixed-use, smart growth investment to a blighted commercial corridor. These are but a few examples of disadvantaged communities that are overcoming their struggles — and using brownfield revitalization as the tool to spark community renewal.

Barriers Remain
Despite these success stories, many disadvantaged communities continue to face significant barriers to redevelopment. Many face the challenge of how to bring private investment into areas where property values are low and the market for redevelopment is weak. Many have deteriorating infrastructure and lack other basic assets needed to attract private investment. Many disadvantaged communities must grapple with the challenges associated with redeveloping smaller sites like abandoned gas stations and corner lots that blight neighborhoods and are often difficult to redevelop due to economies of scale.

Most lack the financial resources needed for cleanup and redevelopment and many lack information about those funding resources and finance tools that do exist. Most lack the local capacity to take advantage of the full range of brownfields and community revitalization tools, resources and partnerships available to help complete redevelopment projects. For those disadvantaged neighborhoods that are beginning to see revitalization, like East Palo Alto and Spartanburg, they must wrestle with the challenge of how to ensure that current community residents receive their fair share of the benefits of redevelopment, such as new jobs and housing.

East Palo Alto, for example, has implemented an aggressive affordable housing program in an effort to counter the gentrification that is beginning to occur. The city has also implemented a very successful “first source” hiring program to benefit local residents. Under the program, the city has required all employers in its redevelopment projects to commit to a hiring process aimed at drawing 30 percent of new hires from a pool of low-income East Palo Alto residents. The program, run in conjunction with a tailored job-training program, has provided 1,200 new jobs to East Palo Alto residents.

Disadvantaged communities also face the challenge of how to ensure that brownfields are redeveloped with sustainable projects using clean manufacturing, pollution prevention, green buildings and renewable energy, and not replaced with facilities that will create more brownfields and blight for the next generation.
Bethel New Life, a faith-based community development corporation, is using brownfield redevelopment as a tool to revitalize an economically depressed neighborhood on Chicago’s west side.

They are creating a new mixed use transit-oriented development around the local train station. The new development will include a new commercial facility with solar panels, recycled construction materials and a green roof; 200 new affordable, energy efficient homes; and additional green space including community gardens and several new parks.

The bottom line is that disadvantaged communities face unique and difficult barriers as they seek to clean up and reuse their brownfields. At the same time, they have the opportunity to learn from the experiences of communities like East Palo Alto and groups like Bethel New Life about how to take advantage of their existing assets and use brownfields as a tool to leverage resources and assistance to spur revitalization. BFN

Ken Brown is with The Ferguson Group in Washington, D.C.

 

COUNTERPOINTS

Brownfield Redevelopment Not About the Disadvantaged
By Lance Stokes

All Brownfields Are Not Created Equal
By Lenny Siegel

Disadvantaged Often Marginalized
By Mary Mulligan