Request for Applications: Smart Growth Implementation Assistance

Free technical assistance available!

Are you trying to encourage specific smart growth techniques like transit-oriented development?
Or direct your state department of transportation investments to better support smart growth?
Are you looking to use smart growth to reach greenhouse gas reduction goals?  Do you need help analyzing guidelines for school investments that best fit your state or community?  Do you need to retrofit a commercial corridor?  Or coordinate your community’s smart growth design with an active aging program?

The Brownfields Amendments of 2001, P.L. 107-118, established three landowner liability protections: the bona fide prospective purchaser defense under CERCLA Section 107(r), the contiguous landowner defense under CERCLA Section 107(q), and the “innocent landowner” defense under CERCLA Sections 107(b)(3) and 101(35). In order to qualify for any of these defenses, the landowner must establish that it………..

Prospective Purchaser Agreements (covenant not to sue)

Status, Comfort and No-Action Letters (no further action letter)

Negotiated Cleanup Standards (You Don’t Need a Cadillac Cleanup to Park Your Pickup)

Consent Decree (government version of a settlement agreement)

Lease from Redevelopment Agency

Environmental Liability Acquisition Companies

Indemnities and Releases

Environmental Risk Insurance

Comment: Complete article below is from 1996 but still is a great introduction to strategies for limiting environmental liability.

Another great article by Thomas Jackson (see his other articles posted here about valuation of contaminated land).

“The earliest notions of stigma and its effect on property values held that any adverse environmental impact on property value could be categorized as environmental stigma. This notion of stigma made it difficult to explain and even more difficult to measure….Recent empirical research has found that parties to real estate deals are increasingly knowledgeable and experienced in dealing with environmental risks. As knowledge and experience increases, risk is more accurately assessed, and generally risk related effects on property values decrease.”

Comment: As always, if you have an appraisal issue with respect to contaminated land, Thomas Jackson should definitely be on your call list.

This article concludes that industrial properties with known unremediated contamination transact at prices 30% less than properties without known contamination issues, and subsequent to remediation, recover to values similar to those without known contamination issues.

Comment: After reading this artice a couple of times, I’m quite sure I’ll never understand all of the statistical modeling behind it’s methodology and conclusions. One thing I do understand is that if any of our readers are even remotely interested in talking with an appraiser who knows about environmentally distressed properties, they absolutely must call Thomas Jackson (http://www.real-analytics.com/). I have to believe he is the, or at least one of the, top specialist(s) in the world at being able to combine appraisal of industrial real values (this alone is a very complex issue, when done correctly with regression analysis, researching all the appropriate attributes of value) with the the additional task of seeking out the scarce information available on transactions for contaminated land, and analyzing them both and making conclusions in such a logical and defensible manner.

Article below is by Charles Bartch (read more about Charles here http://www.iedconline.org/index.php?p=Instructor_Bartsch) of the Northeast-Midwest Institute (www.nemw.org).

Policy staff at The Northeast-Midwest Institute have been exploring brownfield financing strategies/ideas, internally and at the Congressional Coalition Forums that they host and at strategy groups. Much of there work has been embraced by members of the 104th Congress, and will be profiled during the Coalition’s brownfields “summit,” scheduled for July 10 on Capitol Hill.

Tax Incentives

Capital Attraction Incentives

Initiatives to Support Financing

At various times, I come across the term RAP (Remedial Action Plan) and at other times I come across the term RAW (Remedial Action Workplan). I believe the difference might be that the former is used while negotiating with the regulatory agences and the latter is what has been approved by the regulatory agencies, subsequent to the negotiation period.

Question: Can any of our readers correct my interpretation or provide a more precise answer

The article below called, “The Brownfield Toolbox” is an oldie but goodie. It was written by some smart folks over at Barg Coffin Lewis & Trapp, LLP in San Francisco.

The article touches on many different issues, including risk-based corrective action, the details of and difference between Phase I and Phase II investigations, Voluntary Cleanup Program, Prospective Purchaser Agreements (locking in agency protection prior to purchasing), de minimis landowner settlements (I didn”t create the contamination, I just own it….), environmental insurance, etc.The issue of risk-based analysis is interesting because it details how previously there was a zero-tolerance policy with regards to contamination, which mostly lead to alot of boarded up and fenced off sites. Subsequently, the regulators moved to the risk-based system which focused less on the qualitative analysis of whether a site was contaminated and focused more o on the quantitative approach of determining how risky that contamination actually is to humans or the environment. In summary, that provided a more common-sense and solution oriented approach to redevelopment.

Question: Did anyone else find this article interesting?
Question: Any experts out there want to comment on what, if anything, has changed since this was written in June of 1999?

Great article below.

The reporter, Bennett Voyles, really seems to have done homework about who to talk with. Lots of big players from consulting companies, development companies and insurance companies have chimed in.Ã

I thought the part about, “…..Sarbanes-Oxley and Financial Accounting Standards Board Rule 47 (FASB) are prodding companies into dealing with the problems” was interesting.

Question: Will that free up some of corporately owned parcels that have been stuck in limbo for too long?

Question: Anyone else read this one?

• When are you eligible to treat environmental cleanup expenses as a deduction?
• If a property is to be cleaned up in conjunction with a sale, who receives the tax benefit of the cleanup?
• Can you enjoy a one- to two-year reduction in the annual property tax assessment of a property?
• If share price is a concern, is it cost effective to clean up a property, and remove an environmental liability, thus bettering the bottom line for shareholders to see?
• Reference: The points listed above are but a few of the informative issues discussed in the article below written by Bruce Keys (of Foley and Lardner law firm, www.Foley.com) and published by Society of Real Estate Counselors).
• Comment: I thought the discussion was interesting about the idea that it might benefit a corporation to sell an environmentally distressed property because it could potentially remove a large liability from their balance sheet, which hopefully could counterbalance some of the same corporation’s fears about selling the property. Another point I found interesting was that it’s often easier for new, innocent buyers of brownfield properties to obtain funding (grants, tax credits, TIF, etc.) than it would be for the current owner of the property.
• Call for Discussion: Have any of our readers used any of these “tricks of the trade”, or any others?