Well, Isaiah didn’t really say turn brownfields into parks, but he could have if he were around today. Cities like Houston and Newark are changing the script for restoring polluted and blight property and reaping the economic benefits, according to a recent Planning article.
The conventional script calls for cleaning up an abandoned factory and turning it over to a private developer for redevelopment and reuse. The city or state recoups the cleanup cost by the tax revenue the restored property generates. Sounds pretty straightforward, but the possibility that the cleanup missed some of the contamination puts a dark cloud of future potential liability over the developer’s and its funders’ heads.
Consequently, “only brownfield property with extraordinary economic potential—minor contamination combined with a prime location…overcame developers’ liability concerns without government assistance.”
Ok, turning brownfields into parks helps appearances, but what does it do for local tax bases? A lot, at least in Houston. The city spent $182 million cleaning up the former industrial Gas Works Park and converting it into the 12-acre Discovery Green and generated $500 million in private investment along the park’s periphery.
Empirical research suggests that Houston’s experience is no fluke. Texas A&M University professor John Crompton “cites 25 studies that record increased property values around the perimeter of parks. In some cases, the economic impact can be measured as far as 2,000 feet away.”
Houston’s experience offers a deeper and broader lesson. Sometimes creativity lies not in finding new solutions to old problems but new ways to define those problems.
Source: “Turning Brownfields Into Parks,” Peter Harnik and Ryan Donahue, Planning, December 2011, available in the Legislative Library.
