With its tree-lined streets and high-price homes, Park Ridge hardly seems like a community that need concern itself with environmental contamination.
“I think that’s the misconception,” said Sharon Curcio, executive director of the Economic Development Corporation of Park Ridge. “People think that because this is a bedroom community, we don’t have this problem.”
But when owners of the Bredemann auto dealerships announced a few years ago that they needed newer and bigger facilities, the city found itself in a pickle. The dealership was worth $300,000 to $400,000 a year in sales taxes.
The only site in town that could accommodate the dealerships was an 8-acre lot at Dempster Street and Greenwood Avenue. It once was the site of a grocery store, some gas stations, a dry cleaner and other businesses; one gas station was still operating there. The property had scared off other developers because dry cleaners and gas stations typically signal possible ground contamination, and testing and cleanup of such sites is costly. Such contaminated sites are known as brownfields.
“There had been attempts privately to take the land over and do something with it, but the private investors all walked away because of the expense of cleaning up the property,” said Tim Schuenke, city manager. “If you’re in a community like ours, a big piece of property like that is too valuable to let go.”
Deal salvages site
Determined to put the property back into productive use, Park Ridge entered into an agreement to reimburse the dealerships’ owners over time for the roughly $1 million cleanup through new sales and property taxes generated by the redevelopment.
Even after the repayment, the city expects to realize millions of dollars in revenue over the agreement’s 17-year life. It also was able to purchase the dealerships’ original property in the central business district, setting in motion a downtown redevelopment effort. The new dealerships opened early this year.
Whether driven by a lack of open land for development, a need to remove blight, the desire to change their image, or all of the above, many aging northwest suburbs are finding that they must become active partners in addressing brownfields because the private sector will not do it alone.
“Look at Elgin,” said Ray Moller, economic development director of that city. “It’s over 150 years old. There have been uses along the [Fox] River and the core area of our community for that long. . . . “
Elgin is using a state grant to test contamination levels on two commercial/industrial sites along the Fox River that will become part of a 20-acre site the city hopes will attract a developer interested in building 750 to 1,000 units of condos and townhouses. To do that, the city will likely have to participate in the cleanup as well.
It would not be the first time. Elgin participated in cleaning up the site now occupied by the city’s riverboat casino complex, and two other sites converted to public uses.
Other examples of brownfield redevelopment efforts in the northwest suburbs are:
– Palatine, where two contaminated sites in the village’s central business district have been redeveloped into a 43-unit condo complex and the new Gateway Center, a complex that includes a 1,244-space parking deck and a soon-to-be-completed 100,000-square-foot office building.
“They were blighted sites with dilapidated buildings,” said David Fieldman, director of planning and community development. “With contamination, they were difficult sites to redevelop . . . .”
– Bartlett, where village planners hope to see a new mixed-used town center built, just completed cleanup on two former industrial parcels that are part of a 10-acre site on the south edge of downtown.
“We had what amounted to industrial factories in our downtown,” said James Plonczynski, community development director. “Not that that’s bad, but when one of them goes out of business, you’ve got abandoned industrial buildings in your downtown. We had a twofold mission not only to redevelop our downtown, but also to provide a clean, safe environment in the downtown.”
– Mt. Prospect, where a new residential/retail building and part of a three-building condo development are being built on former brownfields in the heart of the central business district.
All these projects have had some level of public participation in the testing and cleanup of the sites, and municipalities expect a return on that investment. In some cases, that’s measurable in dollars, such as the more than $20 million in revenue the Elgin riverboat generates, or in new sales and property taxes.
Some brownfields are cleaned for public uses that improve services or amenities for residents. Brownfield redevelopment is also seen as a solution to urban sprawl, and many brownfields are located downtown.
Downtown image crucial
“It’s not strictly a cash-flow decision,” said Bill Cooney, director of community development in Mt. Prospect, about cleaning up a site. “It’s the heart and soul of your downtown. Those are very visible sites, and if you leave them undeveloped, that’s the image of your town.”
Brownfield redevelopment began gaining attention in the 1990s, when the economy was strong and municipalities and developers were looking for opportunities.
“The reason brownfields came in vogue is that, with the boom in the ’90s, everybody wanted to redevelop their towns,” said William Bow, operations manager with LFR Levine-Fricke, an environmental consulting firm with 20 offices nationwide, including one in Elgin. “Developers were into making money, so it just became an economic thing to do.”
The barriers to brownfield redevelopment were uncertainty over the level of contamination or the cost of cleanup. Developers are not always ready to take those risks.
“As a developer, all we’re looking to do is eliminate areas of risk,” said Larry DiVito, a vice president with Wellington Partners, based in Arlington Heights, which built the 43-unit condo complex in Palatine. “We take on enough risks with the market at large. We’re OK with taking risks as long as they’re somewhat quantifiable.”
Cleanup is costly. Mt. Prospect spent more than $1 million to clean its two downtown sites, Palatine more than $500,000 on its two sites, and Elgin shared a $2 million cleanup cost with the developer for the riverboat site.
Testing costs can run into the tens of thousands of dollars, DiVito said. If the test shows the contamination is too extreme to proceed with a project, the developer has to walk away with no return on that investment. Actual cleanup costs frequently run higher than estimates, which is why developers look for public participation or turn elsewhere.
Tax-increment financing is one popular method used to pay for cleanup costs. And in 1998 the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency introduced a brownfield redevelopment grant to give municipalities one more tool.
State grants help
“The impetus was to develop a partnership with municipalities to address properties that commerce overlooked,” said Steve Colantino, manager of the Illinois EPA’s office of brownfields assistance. “They don’t have that kind of money in their budget, and they’re in the business of providing safe water and safe roads and streets and schools, not cleanup of abandoned sites.”
