Brownfields Help Keep Region Green

By Victoria Parsons

Photo courtesy Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County

Tampa’s Ikea store was built on a brownfield near Ybor City. Besides a central location with high visibility, the site came with state and federal incentives for redevelopment.

“Recycling land” is how Mary Yeargan describes her job as brownfields coordinator for the Environmental Protection Commission of Hillsborough County. She’s in charge of transforming abandoned land — potentially contaminated and generally near historical population centers — into new business or residential uses.

“People are afraid to purchase contaminated property — or even property that might potentially be contaminated — because there are too many unknowns,” she said. “They’re liable for the clean-up whether they caused the problem or not, and even the assessments can be expensive.”

With the brownfields program, federal and state dollars are available to help assess contamination and then clean up properties – plus it limits enforcement action as long as the property owner stays in compliance with their brownfields agreement. “It’s a good reason for people to take a second look,” adds Dan Fahey, who directs brownfields initiatives for the City of Tampa’s Office of Environmental Coordination.

Redeveloping land through the brownfields program benefits the region both environmentally and economically. From an environmental perspective, it promotes clean-up of contamination and encourages close-in development so urban sprawl is limited. An EPA study shows that stormwater runoff from brownfields redevelopment is up to 88% lower than traditional “greenfields” scenarios.

From an economic point of view, it puts properties back on tax rolls at their highest and best use and provides jobs for residents of what are typically low-income neighborhoods. Nationally, the brownfields program has leveraged 61,023 jobs. Nearby residential values can increase when brownfields are cleaned up and redeveloped.

Ikea Most Visible Success Story

The most recent — and one of the most visible — success stories for the brownfields program is the Ikea on Adamo Drive, where the world’s leading home furnishings company built a 353,000-square-foot store with 400-plus full-time jobs on a site that once housed an auto parts recycling business, a newspaper production facility and an canning company.

“Ikea has very specific requirements for their stores,” Fahey notes. “They need a site that ranges from 15 to 30 acres with direct highway access and visibility in a market with a population of at least two million and a location within a 60-minute drive-time for 80% of that population.”

In return for the promise of no further enforcement action for past contamination, Ikea agreed to cover most of the site with two feet of clean fill and to sign restrictive covenants on two areas — a retention pond and truck dock — which could not meet that criteria. “The land was low so they needed to add the fill to bring the foundation and parking lot up to grade anyway,” Yeargan adds.

Ikea qualifies for up to $450,000 in brownfields bonus funding including tax credits for clean-up costs and tax refunds for employees hired from nearby disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Remediation Targets Best Use

Remediation is different for each piece of property — including more than 1000 acres inside Tampa city limits – depending upon its final use, she said. “The brownfields program recognizes that there’s no reason to spend millions of dollars cleaning up land so it’s pristine enough for kids to play on if the best use of the property is industrial and we need to worry about protecting workers rather than children.”

Still, several Tampa Bay properties have been transformed into upscale residential neighborhoods or affordable housing for senior citizens and families. The Lodge at Lakecrest, for instance, is built on the site of the former Ball Container facility where groundwater underneath the 230,000 square-foot plant was contaminated with chlorinated solvents and dioxane.

In Clearwater, brown-fields funding helped rehabilitate the Greenwood Apartments, a privately owned development built near downtown in 1959. A partnership between the city and Bank of America was created to qualify for a series of loans and grants. Ultimately, more than $14 million was invested in the 192-unit community including cleaning up asbestos and lead-based paint, with the bank funding a separate “Make a Difference” center across the street featuring a playground, library, and computer lab.

Another Bank of America project was the redevelopment of the Centro Asturiano Hospital in Ybor City, completed in partnership with the not-for-profit Home Association which operated a nearby long-term care facility. After the hospital went bankrupt in 1991, the 7-acre site began attracted drug dealers and illegal dumping, disrupting the neighborhood.

Redevelopment required cleaning up medical waste, asbestos and several underground storage tanks as well as the illegally dumped material. Today, it provides affordable housing for seniors, including an active community center.

Across the Bay, the city of St. Petersburg won a national Phoenix Award for redeveloping Mercy Hospital into the Johnnie Ruth Clarke Health Center in Midtown. With funding from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s abandoned storage tank program, underground contamination was removed. Federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and Health and Human Services funds were used to demolish unsalvageable portions of the old building and clean up other areas of the site. Brownfields Economic Development Initiative (BEDI) funds were used to renovate and upgrade the remaining portions of the building and expand the facility for future needs.

Much of Channelside and Tampa Heights have been designated as brownfields as has an additional 823 acres on the Tampa Port Authority’s Hookers Point peninsula. Local governments have broad authority to designate properties as brownfields or individuals can apply for brownfields designation if they can prove that they own the property, that it will create at least five new jobs and it’s compatible with the comprehensive plan and zoning.

“Brownfields are a critical piece of developing the Tampa Bay region,” Yeargan notes. “Redeveloping close-in sites discourages urban sprawl and the incentives for redevelopment means the clean-up occurs more expeditiously without the need for a lawsuit to make it happen.”