Brownfields – there is no way to clean up that word – a post-industrial property too polluted to be used as is, but too precious to be abandoned forever. No matter how thoroughly the land’s eight and one-third acres are cleansed, they can never be pristine again. Redevelopment will take place on them, but from an environmental standpoint the challenge is not to shout, “Stop!” but to make the redevelopment work for a legion of vested interests.
           
CLF Ventures, Inc. has engaged in three brownfield projects to date. Its original funder for them was The New York Community Trust’s Henry Phillip Kraft Memorial Fund.  In East Boston, Ventures helped organize a series of community planning meetings at which helped residents and neighbors identify their priorities for an abandoned Hess site. Whoever buys the property will do so knowing which uses the community will support, and, perhaps more important, which it will oppose. In nearby Lynn, Ventures provided technical assistance to city officials who were rehabilitating a 38,000-square-foot site on residential Myrtle Street, the site stained with solvents from a commercial laundry that hadn’t operated there for more than 50 years. The cleanup is complete, and five one-family homes will be built on the land this year.  In New York City’s storied Harlem neighborhood, Ventures is currently researching the abandoned, asbestos-laden P.S. 90 (elementary) school, as well as an abandoned, potentially contaminated old film factory. Its client, the Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI) wants to restore these brownfields to beneficial use.
           
A Problem Site on Myrtle Street
For Hal McGaughey, brownfields manager at the Economic Development and Industrial Corporation (EDIC) of Lynn, economic sense means getting a brownfield back on the tax rolls, and finding the best use for a scarce parcel of vacant land. The Empire Laundry had operated from the early 1900s until 1994, when financial troubles caused it to close. Two years later, the city seized the business for back taxes.
           
The laundry site had long been anomalous in a neighborhood of well-kept one-family homes. Rick Ford, a city councilor who grew up and still lives in a house that backs onto the site, recalls his parents complaining about workers eating lunch on neighborhood porches. After the laundry shut down, it went from community nuisance to disgrace, the owner having left behind large amounts of debris. Weeds were taking over.        
 
Residents petitioned the city to clean up the site. Community meetings followed. People wanted homes built there, ones that would blend into the neighborhood, and the city needed more affordable housing. So Lynn got a pilot grant under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Initiative, and brought in CLF Ventures for technical and legal advice. Pockets of cleaning solvents, metals, and petroleum products had to be removed before housing construction could proceed. McGaughey puts the price tag for decontamination and demolition of the building at $150,000, for cleaning up the lot beneath it at $70,000. His agency loaned the money to the Lynn Housing Authority, which will reimburse it after the houses are sold at market value. Five single-family, multi-bedroom, affordable housing units will be built.
           
The brownfield process, including demolition of the laundry building, took about four years, but McGaughey describes the cleanup as relatively simple. He says that most of the effort involved the removal of contaminated dirt, and eliminating “hot spots.”  What made the project complex was the number of parties involved, both public agencies and private contractors. “You needed everything,” McGaughey says. “If somebody had decided not to pull his weight, or pulled a leg off the stool, [the project] would have collapsed.”
           
A large number of players are typical of brownfield projects. CLF Ventures strives to make sure community voices are among them, even if that makes the projects harder to complete. Jim Hamilton, director of CLF Ventures Brownfield initiatives, says, “You have all kinds of money – private, foundation, socially responsible, and public. How do you pile that together to pull something off? The more players you have, and the more funding sources you have, the more complex the project is. You run the risk of its being unwieldy, because each player has different expectations.”
 
What To Do At Chelsea Creek?
An abandoned site in East Boston illustrates Hamilton’s point.  The land is owned by New Jersey’s Amerada Hess Corporation, and from the 1030s until 1979 petroleum products were stored on this land.  But, in 1998, nineteen years after Hess stopped using the property it tore down ten empty tanks, leaving a vacant, contaminated lot. 
 
The future of this site is far from set, and coming up with a workable plan for it is far more daunting than the challenge posed in Lynn. While Hess is complying with a state mandate to clean the site, its goal is to sell the property – which comes with strings attached. The buyer will have to navigate a maze of government regulations on waterfront uses, and to satisfy a vigilant community that has served notice it will no longer be a pushover for development. “There’s government oversight, and then there’s just the moral authority of communities, of people, that also affects or determines what happens on land,” says Matt Henzy, senior organizer of the Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH), a local nonprofit that helped area residents create the activist Chelsea Creek Action Group (CCAG).
 
A turning point for the site, in 1999, was NOAH’s receiving a state technical assistance grant that enabled it to hire an environmental engineer for assessing technical information. The organization had approached Hess before, but being able to offer its own environmental analysis gave the group legitimacy, according to Stacey Chacker, NOAH’s Director of Community Building and Environment. “They had to take us seriously,” she says. “Now we were speaking their language. Instead of just having a group of angry people in the room, screaming, ‘We want your land,’ we were able to talk about what was going on, and what was the next step.”
 
The result was that Hess hired CLF Ventures to organize a community vision of the master plan in a process called The East Boston Terminal Re-Use Planning Project. Working closely with NOAH, Hamilton orchestrated an elaborate process by which the community learned about issues surrounding the Hess site, and created its own land-use plan. In Spring 2001, local residents attended three meetings, including a hands-on planning session called a charette. To help them gain realistic expectations, a legal analysis was presented by Urban Ecology, as was a market report, by a market analyst called Mt. Auburn Associates. A measure of the planning project’s success was the warm reception given a Hess executive at the final session. Hamilton recalls, “One of the community members … asked if this man could go to Massport [operator of Logan Airport] and show them how redevelopment planning should be handled.”
 
The people of East Boston obviously don’t want more polluting industry on Chelsea Creek. Their plan lists industry as an undesirable use, along with housing, daycare facilities, kindergartens, hotels, parking lots, retail or office space, ball fields, and anything to do with Logan Airport. Many would like the Hess site turned into open space, and linked with Urban Wild, which also overlooks Chelsea Creek. Other favored possibilities include a ferry terminal, a combined harbor walk and bike path, an environmental education center, rowing or sailing facilities, and an amphitheater. Some economic development also would be acceptable, and might even satisfy the port designation. Included might be a fish hatchery, a marina, an artists’ space, a hydroponic farm, and boat repair facilities. While the community is resistant to the construction of housing, it is willing to consider a mixed-use development, with some residential units.
 
According to Sagebien, Hess has promised not sell to industry, but in the end development depends on the buyer. Chacker reports that NOAH/CCAG and The Trust for Public Land are considering a partnership to buy the land for development, in accordance with the community plan. The next step would be a study to see which ideas are feasible.
 
Helping Harlem Make a Comeback
Meanwhile, CLF Ventures has turned its attention to New York, where it’s working with HCCI. Private developers are again building in Harlem after a long absence, and the best sites for redevelopment are being snapped up, according to Hamilton. HCCI is determined to get at least one site for community use, and it’s eyeing P.S. 90 as the potential home of a much-needed high school, where residents could also get job training, and local businesses could find technology services. The film factory site is another high-potential project, where HCCI proposes to consolidate its 20,000 square feet of office space that is spread around Harlem. That would free up an equal amount of space  for new commercial tenants, which would support Harlem’s economic resurgence. Yet to be determined are regulatory and legal obstacles at factory and school, rehabilitation costs, and possible funding sources.
 
HCCI is experienced in creating urban projects, but now finds itself in new territory as it turns to environmental agencies and grant makers, heretofore more focused on unspoiled areas – far from crowded cities. CLF Ventures will be its guide, starting with site selection. As Hamilton puts it, “We’re partnering in Harlem, and in other places, and finding ways we can help demonstrate that a strong community presence with a diverse funding pool can make a project succeed – economically, socially, and environmentally.”
 
Hamilton sees no shortage of brownfields, community nuisances contaminated with the detritus of America’s industrial past; economic losers and health hazards, yet in congested urban areas, where land is scarce, they represent hope. Reclaiming them can create space for parks, houses, businesses, and public services. Suburbs can benefit, too, if developers seeking room to build aren’t forced to leave cities.
 
With so much to be gained by so many, Jim Hamilton foresees many potential clients for Ventures’ Brownfields Initiatives. His group will work with civic groups, developers, site owners, and municipalities, whoever has a legitimate interest in reviving a brownfield, and in putting it to good use. “Because we’re the Conservation Law Foundation, our clients include the environment and the community at large,” he says. “Exploiters need not apply.”
 
Jane Salodof MacNeil is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Groveland, Massachusetts.