Once considered a secondary market for the south suburban steel business, Lansing, just south of the Little Calumet River near Indiana’s border, thrived with fabricating plants, metal shops and distribution centers.
With the massive exodus of steel companies from the Chicago area over the last 30 years, what’s left today is an ugly legacy of abandoned factories and contaminated land, which Lansing officials believe could be fundamental to their economic future.
“We’re pretty much landlocked,” said Grace Bazylewski, director of planning and development for the village, who said competing with still-rural Will County and Indiana for new development is difficult. “Redeveloping existing sites in our communities is becoming more and more an issue because we want the jobs, the retails, the homes to happen here.”
Lansing and its neighbors Riverdale, Chicago Heights, South Chicago Heights and Dolton recently were named the collective winners of a $200,000 Brownfields grant to help spark the cleanup and future redevelopment of former industrial sites as part of a new federal program.
Unlike other Brownfields grants, this pilot program allows multiple municipalities to pool their money, which means they can fund the studies needed to get further grants and still have money left to apply toward their matching funds requirement for those grants.
“This is the first time that the U.S. EPA is taking a block of money and breaking it out to help jump-start cleanup initiatives in a number of communities under one grant,” said Steve Colantino, manager of the office of Brownfields Assistance for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
Distributed through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the grant was awarded to the communities through the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association.
The association secured the grant on behalf of the towns in what is considered the first significant regional effort to address needed environmental cleanup of abandoned industrial sites in the south suburbs.
“Environmental issues have always been a priority for the association,” said Karen Hoffschmidt, Solid Waste Program director for the South Suburban Mayors and Managers Association, who will help coordinate the funds.
Brownfields was established to improve sites that are generally abandoned or under-used industrial or commercial properties where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by actual or perceived environmental contamination.
Colantino said in the past, federal laws allowed only one municipal applicant to apply for and receive Brownfields funds. He said the new program represents precedent for south suburban communities, who have historically not been able to afford to participate in the state and federal Brownfields programs, which typically require 30 percent matching-funds contribution.
Often, once a community had paid for the studies required, they did not have anything left over for matching funds.
Additional funds will be needed to begin the arduous task of restoration in the south suburbs, which have a long industrial legacy and hundreds of problem sites.
That is especially true for the five target suburbs, which compared to larger municipalities such as Harvey and Blue Island, could not afford the price or the staff needed to conduct studies on their own, officials said.
