Despite a newly buttressed tax credit program intended to spur the redevelopment of polluted properties in New York, a large percentage of such “brownfield” projects were tabled amid the poisoned debt markets of the recession.
Of 30 applications approved in the fiscal year ending March 31 by the Department of Environmental Conservation, more than half were withdrawn either prior to or after DEC approval. That compares unfavorably with just a 31 percent withdrawal rate in the previous fiscal years dating back to 2003.
DEC released the data recently as part of its annual review of New York”™s Brownfield Cleanup Program, launched in 2003 to spur redevelopment of such sites in part by establishing environmental zones in poorer areas where tax credits are enhanced in a bid to draw developers. In the lower Hudson Valley, Yonkers, Mount Vernon and Poughkeepsie have large swaths of such “en-zones.”
The state revamped the Brownfield Cleanup Program last year to roughly double tax credits available for developments on average.
DEC issued a dozen certificates of completion for brownfield sites in the past year, including for the former Banknote Corp. of America property in Ramapo, the Harbor Square site in Ossining and two parcels of land in Yonkers approved for restricted residential construction.
A local project generated the single largest tax credit in New York last year ”“ an affiliate controlled by developer Louis Cappelli received $60 million in credits for the Renaissance Square Residences, a $300 million brownfield development at 221 Main St. in White Plains. Manhattan”™s Clinton Green Development was the only other project in New York to generate anywhere near as large a tax credit at $44 million, according to the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance.
In the lower Hudson Valley, the Main Street Lofts project in Yonkers was the only other brownfield redevelopment to garner tax credits, totaling nearly $3 million.
In addition to triggering tax credits, such certificates provide liability protections for developers and property owners. Last month in Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell signed a bill that absolves developers of liability for prior pollution of neighboring parcels of land, in a bid to jumpstart brownfield development in cities like Bridgeport that have a large number of brownfield sites.
It was the first major overhaul of Connecticut”™s property remediation statutes in close to 15 years, said Lee Hoffman, an attorney in the Hartford office of Pullman & Comley. Lawmakers also centralized more brownfields authority under the state Department of Economic and Community Development.
“We have to realize there are a series of sites in Connecticut that are so polluted that no viable party is going to pay for it,” Hoffman said. “We have been putting our heads into the sand when it comes to these sites.”
Also supporting the bill this past spring was Ann Catino, co-chairwoman of a three-year-old Connecticut task force on brownfield strategies. In testifying her support, Catino cited statistics suggesting about 20 jobs are created for every $300,000 in public money invested in brownfield remediation, compared with just one job for other federal programs through HUD of the Department of Commerce.
“(Developers) should be required ”¦ to just look at the four corners of the site and remediate the site, and not chase it down rivers,” Catino said.
