Greensboro Receives $200,000 in Federal Funding to Enhance Community Redevelopment

By Kristen H. Long
Saturday, April 5, 2008

Summary: City Receives Grant Funds!

The City of Greensboro is actively seeking community involvement in the implementation of a new grant project. In March 2007, Greensboro secured a $200,000 Brownfields Assessment grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assess the level of hazardous contamination at multiple sites throughout the City. Other cities and towns throughout the U.S. have used this program to turn dilapidated buildings into new parks, businesses, and residences. You can help by letting us know of any abandoned or underutilized sites in your area. Please contact: Kristen H. Long, Brownfields Project Manager, Concurrent Technologies Corporation (800) 846-6001 or longk@ctc.com or Cail Newsome Hammons, Greensboro Better Hometown Program 706) 453-7592 or cailhammons@greeneccoc.org

Recommended sites may be thought or known to be contaminated with hazardous substances, such as dry cleaners, former manufacturers or petroleum related, such as leaking underground storage tanks from former gas and/or service stations. The City is currently evaluating and assessing hazardous sites at this time due to the type (hazardous) of grant they recently received. The City may pursue additional EPA grants to address petroleum substances in the future; therefore, please feel free to submit information on any site that impacts your neighborhood.

Over the project lifespan, the City of Greensboro will be hosting a series of city meetings and workshops where you can communicate which sites you feel should be assessed and/or redeveloped first, as well as learn the basics of the brownfields project. The first workshop is scheduled to occur at the July 21, 2008 City Council meeting at 7:00 p.m. at City Hall.

By assessing potentially contaminated properties in Greensboro, the City is quantifying the risks involved in redeveloping the properties. Through this process, property owners and developers will be encouraged to clean up these sites and put them back into productive use. The City requests your assistance in identifying and prioritizing brownfield sites. Once an inventory of potential sites has been completed, the City will assess contamination and create cleanup and redevelopment plans at high-priority sites as funding allows. During the redevelopment phase for certain properties, the City will be working to implement some of the ideas and designs generated during the 2005 charette.

More information about the grant will be available on the project web site www.ctcbrownfields.com/greensboro (this will be formally introduced at the July 21st meeting) or by visiting the EPA grant program site at: www.epa.gov/brownfields.