15
Jul
2003
Last week, the City of Davenport hosted a different type of tour, spotlighting locations that officials would usually prefer residents and tourists didn't see: the old city dump between West River Drive and Marquette Street, blighted commercial and industrial areas further to the west on River Drive, and a pocket of abandoned commercial buildings on Dittmer Street.
The tour, attended by more than 30 people, was part of the city's effort to assess "brownfields": properties that sit unused or underused because of a perception that they're contaminated and would require expensive cleanup before they could be re-developed.
Two years ago, Davenport received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do brownfield assessments - the process through which property owners discover what (if any) contamination is in their land. This fall, the city will receive another $200,000 to continue assessments. It's the beginning of a process that, if all goes as planned, will revitalize western Davenport.
But there was clearly some frustration on the part of city officials and property owners on the Friday tour.
The city has identified a massive brownfields project area - from Marquette Street on the east to Utah Avenue on the west, basically southeast of Rockingham Road - and seems to be operating without a sense of what the area might look like when it's re-developed. "Where is the vision for the goals?" asked Ward 1 Alderman Roxanna Moritz after the tour. "How do we be more goal-oriented?"
"We have outlined a general vision," responded Len Adams, an economic-development specialist with the city who led the tour. "This sort of thing starts slowly. The spark is going to come when there's an actual interest in developing."
And property owners who are already leery of the assessment process are even more hesitant when they learn that at this point there are no funds to help with cleanup. "What is the benefit of doing it without the funds to clean it up?" said Michael Marthens, who runs Marthens Company in the brownfields area and has been trying to convince his neighbors to agree to assessments.
The City of Davenport did apply for cleanup funds from the EPA, but the request was denied "because we are not far enough along in the assessment process," Adams said.
Davenport is certainly hindered both by having a large brownfields area and by relying on the federal government for funding. Across the Mississippi, Illinois cities have benefited both from a more targeted approach to brownfields and the assistance of the Illinois EPA, which has been proactive in cleaning up contaminated sites.
"Illinois has a very aggressive ... program for dealing with brownfields," said Sally Heffernan, special projects manager for the City of Rock Island. "They have money to spend for brownfield re-development."
To See or Not to See
Brownfields are attractive to cities for a number of reasons. For one thing, a brownfield site put back into productive use reduces urban sprawl, and if the cost of cleanup - technically known as "remediation" - is covered by some government entity, development costs can be relatively low.
"It's very economical," Adams said. "You have all the infrastructure and you don't have to build on a greenfield."
In addition, brownfields frequently don't require expensive cleanup. "Remediation doesn't always mean digging it up and carrying it away," said Cynthia Quast, assistant project manager for Howard R. Green Company (which is conducting the assessments for Davenport). Sometimes, a parking lot can eliminate any risk to public health posed by contamination.
"The end use is important," Heffernan said. With an industrial site that's going to be re-used as an industrial site, "the cleanup level is not as great" as when a site is going to be used as a park or residential area.
Brownfield assessments happen in two phases. Phase I is a public-records search that identifies how a piece of land and surrounding properties have been used through the years. This reveals what types of contaminants might be in the soil or groundwater. Phase II involves sampling soil and groundwater to determine what dangerous materials are actually present.
Adams said he expects to conduct nearly 20 Phase I assessments with the city's two federal grants, and another 10 Phase II assessments.
Rock Island has used $180,000 in state funding to take eight properties through Phase II assessments, and it did three assessments on its own. But the city has more to show for its work, with federal funding lined up to remediate one site and two other properties already re-developed. Moline used state funding for brownfield remediation for the Bass Street Landing riverfront project, and East Moline has used federal funding for cleanup at the site of The Quarter.
(Bettendorf has no brownfield program. Steve Van Dyke, the city's community-development director, said it's a matter of resources. "We, being short-staffed for quite a long time, really haven't been able to do much with that," he said. "If you don't have the guns, you don't have the guns.)
Adams insisted that progress is being made in Davenport. He compared the brownfields process to construction. "This is kind of like building a building," he said. "It looks a long way from being done until right before you move in."
The Davenport brownfields area can be divided into eastern and western parts, with the dividing point where River Drive and Floral Lane meet. To the west is Nahant Marsh - which was contaminated with lead before being cleaned up as part of the federal Superfund program - and an industrial park. "There's some steam there," Adams said of re-development momentum, so the city has elected to focus its assessment money on the eastern portion.
There are no concrete proposals yet for development of Davenport's brownfields area, although there are general concepts. Adams said he envisions maintaining the three "bands of use" in the eastern area: recreational near the river, commercial along the highway corridor, and industrial to the north and west. "The most achievable goal would be to make these areas as good as they can be" within their existing uses, he said.
Adams was looking for people on Friday's tour to give him more-concrete ideas about what they'd like to see on some of the land, such as the old city dump on the brownfield area's eastern edge. But the tour group offered very little feedback. The problem was that people kept getting bogged down in details, such as who would pay for cleanup and what kind of remediation might be required for this site or that.
Adams didn't seem daunted. "It's a good process, to look and to dream about what could be," he said.
Lawrence T. Bryant of Public Involvement Unlimited, a subcontractor helping the city conduct is public brownfields process, said the tour was helpful in giving stakeholders a physical view of the project area. "It just gave a little more understanding of how this might all fit together," he said. "A lot of people [previously] did not make a connection."
The next step for the city is to create a vision for the area, he said, starting with a commitment to re-development, then establishing possible uses for the brownfields, and then actually cleaning up the land and putting it back in use.
But Davenport is at a disadvantage compared to its Illinois counterparts, because it's working with the federal bureaucracy instead of an active partner like the Illinois EPA.
Providing a Model
Although Davenport has gotten more money than the city across the river, Rock Island is farther along.
The City of Rock Island has received $180,000 from the Illinois EPA and has completed Phase II assessments on eight sites. The city expects to apply for another $60,000 in state grants to conduct two more assessments.
"We've also done three sites on our own," Heffernan said. "We didn't have time to go through the state process." Those include two new buildings; facilities for the Illinois Casualty Company and Robert Young Center for Community Mental Health were built on brownfield sites.
Rock Island is also in the process of securing $95,000 from the U.S. EPA for cleanup of the Midway Oil headquarters and bulk-distribution center between the Quad City Industrial Center and the Sylvan Slough. That money will cover 80 percent of the cleanup costs, with the remainder coming from the city. The property, along with two adjacent parcels, is being turned into the five-acre Sylvan Slough Natural Area, which will feature native vegetation and also serve as a demonstration area for River Action's Retain the Rain program. This is the type of clear vision that attracts cleanup money from the U.S. EPA.
When asked to compare how Rock Island has done things compared with Davenport, Heffernan said, "They seem to be going about it in a different way," with an assessment area that encompasses nearly 2,500 acres. The difference is basically that Davenport is taking a global approach to brownfields, looking at the issue in a big chunk of the riverfront west side, while Rock Island and other Illinois Quad Cities have approached the problem site-specifically.
Rock Island started with 30 brownfield sites in and near its downtown three years ago, targeting locations that it felt weren't being re-developed because of fear that the land was contaminated. The city then narrowed its initial list to a dozen and then approached landowners.
But Adams said it's important for Davenport to craft a master plan for the area, and not do work piecemeal. "We want to make sure what we come up with isn't swamped or replaced with something else," he said.
In Davenport, like in other communities, property owners have been hesitant to agree to an assessment, because they're concerned that if there is contamination, they'll be forced to pay for cleanup. "We've had that problem, certainly," Heffernan said.
But in Illinois, meetings with property owners often include representatives of the Illinois EPA. "It's extremely helpful to have IEPA there," Heffernan said.
The fear of assessments is understandable, but Heffernan said it's not logical. If property owners ever plan to sell a piece of land, an assessment will be necessary.
"Banks are very skittish about getting into ... a contaminated site," Heffernan said. "If you can't move your property because of perceived contamination, why not find out how much it's going to cost to clean it up?"
What property owners don't often know is that both the Illinois and federal governments have changed their approach to brownfields in the past decade. Before, they might have demanded remediation immediately when contamination was found. Now, both look at each situation individually. Quick cleanup will be required only if there's an immediate threat to human health.
There are certainly horror stories - those that show how contamination can stop development in its tracks unless remediation funding can be found. Rock Island was planning to purchase one small piece of land until assessments revealed it would need a $50,000 cleanup. "It didn't make sense for us to purchase the property," Heffernan said. The city still has an option to purchase the land, and it might be able to get funding from the Illinois EPA for cleanup.
But often, a simple solution to contamination can be found. At sites where contaminants are not leeching into groundwater or other properties, landowners can simply create an "engineered barrier," which is jargon for something as basic as a parking lot.
But that's looking too far ahead for Davenport. The city still needs to figure out what it plans to do once its assessments are completed, and it needs to convince more property owners to agree to put their land in the program.
Adams said that will come when the city can point to a success story - a piece of land that requires no remediation, or a property that the federal government pays to clean up . "People are going to stop being leery," he said.
That shows that Davenport understands that there's a place in its big-picture strategy for targeted brownfield re-development. Now the city must make sure it gets that success story, to pave the way for revitalizing an entire section of the city.
The tour, attended by more than 30 people, was part of the city's effort to assess "brownfields": properties that sit unused or underused because of a perception that they're contaminated and would require expensive cleanup before they could be re-developed.
Two years ago, Davenport received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to do brownfield assessments - the process through which property owners discover what (if any) contamination is in their land. This fall, the city will receive another $200,000 to continue assessments. It's the beginning of a process that, if all goes as planned, will revitalize western Davenport.
But there was clearly some frustration on the part of city officials and property owners on the Friday tour.
The city has identified a massive brownfields project area - from Marquette Street on the east to Utah Avenue on the west, basically southeast of Rockingham Road - and seems to be operating without a sense of what the area might look like when it's re-developed. "Where is the vision for the goals?" asked Ward 1 Alderman Roxanna Moritz after the tour. "How do we be more goal-oriented?"
"We have outlined a general vision," responded Len Adams, an economic-development specialist with the city who led the tour. "This sort of thing starts slowly. The spark is going to come when there's an actual interest in developing."
And property owners who are already leery of the assessment process are even more hesitant when they learn that at this point there are no funds to help with cleanup. "What is the benefit of doing it without the funds to clean it up?" said Michael Marthens, who runs Marthens Company in the brownfields area and has been trying to convince his neighbors to agree to assessments.
The City of Davenport did apply for cleanup funds from the EPA, but the request was denied "because we are not far enough along in the assessment process," Adams said.
Davenport is certainly hindered both by having a large brownfields area and by relying on the federal government for funding. Across the Mississippi, Illinois cities have benefited both from a more targeted approach to brownfields and the assistance of the Illinois EPA, which has been proactive in cleaning up contaminated sites.
"Illinois has a very aggressive ... program for dealing with brownfields," said Sally Heffernan, special projects manager for the City of Rock Island. "They have money to spend for brownfield re-development."
To See or Not to See
Brownfields are attractive to cities for a number of reasons. For one thing, a brownfield site put back into productive use reduces urban sprawl, and if the cost of cleanup - technically known as "remediation" - is covered by some government entity, development costs can be relatively low.
"It's very economical," Adams said. "You have all the infrastructure and you don't have to build on a greenfield."
In addition, brownfields frequently don't require expensive cleanup. "Remediation doesn't always mean digging it up and carrying it away," said Cynthia Quast, assistant project manager for Howard R. Green Company (which is conducting the assessments for Davenport). Sometimes, a parking lot can eliminate any risk to public health posed by contamination.
"The end use is important," Heffernan said. With an industrial site that's going to be re-used as an industrial site, "the cleanup level is not as great" as when a site is going to be used as a park or residential area.
Brownfield assessments happen in two phases. Phase I is a public-records search that identifies how a piece of land and surrounding properties have been used through the years. This reveals what types of contaminants might be in the soil or groundwater. Phase II involves sampling soil and groundwater to determine what dangerous materials are actually present.
Adams said he expects to conduct nearly 20 Phase I assessments with the city's two federal grants, and another 10 Phase II assessments.
Rock Island has used $180,000 in state funding to take eight properties through Phase II assessments, and it did three assessments on its own. But the city has more to show for its work, with federal funding lined up to remediate one site and two other properties already re-developed. Moline used state funding for brownfield remediation for the Bass Street Landing riverfront project, and East Moline has used federal funding for cleanup at the site of The Quarter.
(Bettendorf has no brownfield program. Steve Van Dyke, the city's community-development director, said it's a matter of resources. "We, being short-staffed for quite a long time, really haven't been able to do much with that," he said. "If you don't have the guns, you don't have the guns.)
Adams insisted that progress is being made in Davenport. He compared the brownfields process to construction. "This is kind of like building a building," he said. "It looks a long way from being done until right before you move in."
The Davenport brownfields area can be divided into eastern and western parts, with the dividing point where River Drive and Floral Lane meet. To the west is Nahant Marsh - which was contaminated with lead before being cleaned up as part of the federal Superfund program - and an industrial park. "There's some steam there," Adams said of re-development momentum, so the city has elected to focus its assessment money on the eastern portion.
There are no concrete proposals yet for development of Davenport's brownfields area, although there are general concepts. Adams said he envisions maintaining the three "bands of use" in the eastern area: recreational near the river, commercial along the highway corridor, and industrial to the north and west. "The most achievable goal would be to make these areas as good as they can be" within their existing uses, he said.
Adams was looking for people on Friday's tour to give him more-concrete ideas about what they'd like to see on some of the land, such as the old city dump on the brownfield area's eastern edge. But the tour group offered very little feedback. The problem was that people kept getting bogged down in details, such as who would pay for cleanup and what kind of remediation might be required for this site or that.
Adams didn't seem daunted. "It's a good process, to look and to dream about what could be," he said.
Lawrence T. Bryant of Public Involvement Unlimited, a subcontractor helping the city conduct is public brownfields process, said the tour was helpful in giving stakeholders a physical view of the project area. "It just gave a little more understanding of how this might all fit together," he said. "A lot of people [previously] did not make a connection."
The next step for the city is to create a vision for the area, he said, starting with a commitment to re-development, then establishing possible uses for the brownfields, and then actually cleaning up the land and putting it back in use.
But Davenport is at a disadvantage compared to its Illinois counterparts, because it's working with the federal bureaucracy instead of an active partner like the Illinois EPA.
Providing a Model
Although Davenport has gotten more money than the city across the river, Rock Island is farther along.
The City of Rock Island has received $180,000 from the Illinois EPA and has completed Phase II assessments on eight sites. The city expects to apply for another $60,000 in state grants to conduct two more assessments.
"We've also done three sites on our own," Heffernan said. "We didn't have time to go through the state process." Those include two new buildings; facilities for the Illinois Casualty Company and Robert Young Center for Community Mental Health were built on brownfield sites.
Rock Island is also in the process of securing $95,000 from the U.S. EPA for cleanup of the Midway Oil headquarters and bulk-distribution center between the Quad City Industrial Center and the Sylvan Slough. That money will cover 80 percent of the cleanup costs, with the remainder coming from the city. The property, along with two adjacent parcels, is being turned into the five-acre Sylvan Slough Natural Area, which will feature native vegetation and also serve as a demonstration area for River Action's Retain the Rain program. This is the type of clear vision that attracts cleanup money from the U.S. EPA.
When asked to compare how Rock Island has done things compared with Davenport, Heffernan said, "They seem to be going about it in a different way," with an assessment area that encompasses nearly 2,500 acres. The difference is basically that Davenport is taking a global approach to brownfields, looking at the issue in a big chunk of the riverfront west side, while Rock Island and other Illinois Quad Cities have approached the problem site-specifically.
Rock Island started with 30 brownfield sites in and near its downtown three years ago, targeting locations that it felt weren't being re-developed because of fear that the land was contaminated. The city then narrowed its initial list to a dozen and then approached landowners.
But Adams said it's important for Davenport to craft a master plan for the area, and not do work piecemeal. "We want to make sure what we come up with isn't swamped or replaced with something else," he said.
In Davenport, like in other communities, property owners have been hesitant to agree to an assessment, because they're concerned that if there is contamination, they'll be forced to pay for cleanup. "We've had that problem, certainly," Heffernan said.
But in Illinois, meetings with property owners often include representatives of the Illinois EPA. "It's extremely helpful to have IEPA there," Heffernan said.
The fear of assessments is understandable, but Heffernan said it's not logical. If property owners ever plan to sell a piece of land, an assessment will be necessary.
"Banks are very skittish about getting into ... a contaminated site," Heffernan said. "If you can't move your property because of perceived contamination, why not find out how much it's going to cost to clean it up?"
What property owners don't often know is that both the Illinois and federal governments have changed their approach to brownfields in the past decade. Before, they might have demanded remediation immediately when contamination was found. Now, both look at each situation individually. Quick cleanup will be required only if there's an immediate threat to human health.
There are certainly horror stories - those that show how contamination can stop development in its tracks unless remediation funding can be found. Rock Island was planning to purchase one small piece of land until assessments revealed it would need a $50,000 cleanup. "It didn't make sense for us to purchase the property," Heffernan said. The city still has an option to purchase the land, and it might be able to get funding from the Illinois EPA for cleanup.
But often, a simple solution to contamination can be found. At sites where contaminants are not leeching into groundwater or other properties, landowners can simply create an "engineered barrier," which is jargon for something as basic as a parking lot.
But that's looking too far ahead for Davenport. The city still needs to figure out what it plans to do once its assessments are completed, and it needs to convince more property owners to agree to put their land in the program.
Adams said that will come when the city can point to a success story - a piece of land that requires no remediation, or a property that the federal government pays to clean up . "People are going to stop being leery," he said.
That shows that Davenport understands that there's a place in its big-picture strategy for targeted brownfield re-development. Now the city must make sure it gets that success story, to pave the way for revitalizing an entire section of the city.
