Dec 3, 2024

2024 Brownfield Successes

As another year comes to an end, the Center for Creative Land Recycling took pause to reflect on how our team, partners, and the communities we serve are advancing community needs through brownfield reuse. From climate change resiliency to affordable housing: former brownfields are the foundation for the change we need to create the just, equitable, sustainable, and pollution-free communities all people deserve.

We have compiled some of the more inspiring brownfield milestones and accomplishments of 2024 to share with you. While we tried our best to cover everything, we apologize if we left your project out. If you have a milestone that you would like CCLR to share, please email [email protected]

EPA Announces $233 Million in Brownfield Funding

In May, EPA announced the FY24 EPA Brownfield Grant Awardees. CCLR was excited to congratulate communities across Regions 9 and 10 for their awards, including:

Northern Arizona Council of Governments Awarded Route 66 Brownfields Assessment Coalition Grant

The Route 66 Coalition was awarded its third EPA grant to assist towns along Round 66 to inventory and assess brownfields. This funding will help these towns address economic development and job creation, the preservation of historical and cultural heritage, environmental protection and mitigation, and improved environmental justice.

Carson California Awarded EPA Community Wide Assessment Grant

The City of Carson is turning a history of environmental injustice into an opportunity for economic development. Carson was awarded a $500,000 EPA FY24 Community Wide Assessment grant that it will use to identify and prioritize sites for cleanup and reuse. This grant is in addition to four DTSC ECRG grants the City has utilized for similar efforts. In a press release announcing the grant, Carson Mayor Lula Davis-Holmes said, “Our newly adopted Economic Development Strategic Plan codified our commitment to becoming a national brownfield remediation and redevelopment leader, and this EPA funding reaffirms our commitment to environmental justice, strategic economic development, and creating a healthier, more equitable future.”

Sherwood Oregon Awarded EPA Cleanup Grant

The City of Sherwood was awarded a $5 million dollar EPA FY24 Cleanup Grant to remediate the former Frontier Leather Tannery. Through community engagement and remediation, the City will protect natural resources, and provide future opportunities for greenspace, a public works and emergency operations center, and community space and resilience hub. CCLR is proud to have supported Sherwood with an EPA Assessment grant application review, which was awarded in May 2024. We congratulate Sherwood on their successful grant application!

Fronterra Northwest Awarded EPA Cleanup Grant

The non-profit land trust Fronterra NW received an EPA MAC grant to fund cleanup efforts on Roslyn Number 4 Mine Site in Roslyn, Washington. With its $1,779,070 EPA Cleanup grant, Forterra NW can finish its remaining investigation and, eventually, excavate 2,900 cubic yards of contaminated soil across the 30-acre property. According to Forterra’s application, “remediation and redevelopment of the Site has the potential to provide a mix of affordably priced housing, green space, community space, and small business space to serve residents and workers.”

CCLR Hosts Workshops in Arizona and Washington

Collage of photos from Washington Workshops

In April 2024, we hosted workshops in Wilcox, Phoenix, and Flagstaff Arizona in partnership with U.S. EPA Region 9 and supported by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. In September, CCLR hosted an additional three workshops in Washington in Richland, North Bend and Bremerton with support from EPA Region 10 and the Washington Department of Ecology. The workshops were well attended by nearly 300 participants who learned about brownfield programs, overcoming challenges, and heard inspiring case studies. Each workshop concluded with a tour of local sites that have benefitted from brownfield funds. CCLR looks forward to continuing our workshop series with northern and central California events in 2025.

Superior Arizona Enterprise Center Graduates First Class

The town of Superior is utilizing brownfield funding to transform its nearly 100-year-old historic high school into a hub for the community and town services. The first phase of that transformation, the Superior Enterprise Center, graduated its first class of welding students this spring. The second class is currently in full swing, training Superior youth in skills that will help them secure high-paying jobs, and make a life for themselves in their hometown. Watch the Video on Superior’s Brownfield Transformation.

San Francisco Opens India Basin Shoreline Park

The India Basin Waterfront Park at 900 Innes opened to the public in October, 2024 after more than a decade of redevelopment. The park sits along a 13-mile stretch of coast slated for open space redevelopment known as the San Francisco Blue Greenway project, in San Francisco’s Hunters Point neighborhood. Prior to redevelopment, the site was a long abandoned former boat maintenance facility that attracted vandalism and marred the coastline in a community that has long suffered from underinvestment. CCLR assisted San Francisco Parks Alliance with several EPA Brownfield grants for the assessment and cleanup of more than a century of contamination on the site. The new park offers recreational and educational opportunities, public art, and sea-level rise protection to the environmental justice community of Hunters Point.

Santa Ana Opens New Affordable Housing Development

DTSC Staff Anthony Rosas and Maryam Tasnif-Abbasi (left) and Others at Ribbon Cutting

The City of Santa Ana and the County of Orange welcomed new residents to a new deeply affordable housing complex in September, 2024. After a Phase II assessment discovered abandoned fuel storage tanks and contamination on the site for the planned 85-unit development, the County applied for, and was awarded an ECRG Round 1 Cleanup Grant. The $1.05-million grant funded the removal of contaminated soil and other remediation efforts, ensuring the site was clean before construction. The new community supports families with less than 30% AMI and features studio, two and three bedroom floor plans, amenities including a pool and playground, and permanent supported services to ensure residents thrive.

Various ECRG Projects Break Ground

The first Equitable Communities Revitalization Grants were awarded in 2021. These grantees have been working hard and several granted projects broke ground in 2024. These projects include:

City of Lynwood: New Northgate Market Grocery Store
Resources for Community Development: 77 affordable housing units and retail near MacArthur BART in Oakland
Satellite Affordable Housing Associates: Native American Health Center and 76 affordable housing units in Oakland
Kingdom Development: 84-unit affordable housing development with ground-level retail in Los Angeles
East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation: 97 affordable senior housing units at Lake Merritt BART in Oakland

Sierra Institute for Community and Environment Expands Cross Laminated Timber Production at Former Brownfield

Roundhouse Council Building Grand Opening: At the podium is Mary Joseph, Roundhouse Executive Director, seated (from l-r): Danny Manning, Roundhouse Board Chair; Shelby Leung, Roundhouse Board member; Martha Guzman Aceves, Region 9 EPA Administrator; Jonathan Kusel, Executive Director, Sierra Institute for Community and Environment; Kevin Goss, District 2 Supervisor, Plumas County; Susan Jones, Principal, atelierjones architects (Roundhouse architects).

At the start of 2024, CCLR featured the Sierra Institute in its Rural Revitalization video, which highlighted how the nonprofit leveraged brownfield funding to redevelop a sawmill. The development of the Indian Valley Wood Utilization Campus has created jobs and is utilizing burned trees felled for fire safety to create locally sourced biofuel and lumber.

This fall, the Sierra Institute was awarded a $1M grant from the U.S. Forest Service, $2 million from Cal Fire and another $1 million from the Tahoe Truckee Community Foundation to develop a community-scale Cross Laminated Timber processing facility at the Indian Valley Wood Utilization Campus. CLT is a sustainable and fire-resistant product that the Sierra Institute will utilize to rebuild homes and businesses lost to the 2020 Dixie Fire. Also this year, the Sierra Institute held a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Roundhouse Council Building for the Mountain Maidu People in Greenville, California. The new Roundhouse replaces the Tribe’s previous facilities that were destroyed by the Dixie Fire. The new resilient building is made of CLT and honors traditional tribal architecture and cultural heritage while better meeting the needs of the Tribe.

Rio de Los Angeles State Park Welcomes Back Endangered Species

For more than 75-years Taylor Yards operated as a railway maintenance station for Union Pacific. The City of Los Angeles and a variety of partners have worked together to assess, remediate and reuse several parcels of the site into: homes, businesses, a high school, playgrounds, sports facilities, and open space. Parcel D, which consists of 40 acres, opened as Rio de Los Angeles State Park in 2007 with assistance from State Parks and the Audubon Society. After a long hiatus due to a lack of habitat, the endangered least Bell’s vireo has returned, and is thriving. On one of the two parcels still in process of assessment and cleanup, 2024 also saw the successful completion of bioremediation pilot studies. Led by researcher Danielle Stevenson, the studies concluded that mycelium paired with native plants can successfully remove petrochemicals and heavy metals from soil. Stevenson joined CCLR for a “Functional Fungi” webinar in April where she shared the results and learnings from the studies.

City and County of Honolulu Hawaii Plan Iwilei-Kapalama Transit Oriented Development

CCLR facilitated a workshop series and other technical assistance related to Honolulu’s ambitious planned reuse of the currently underutilized Iwilei Center in the urban core of Honolulu. Multiple entities are partnering to create a mixed-use TOD project which will result in the creation of an entirely electric rail transit center (Kuwili Station) and over 1,500 units of affordable housing. The project includes the reuse of nearly two-dozen brownfields. CCLR assisted in identifying potential challenges and developing a path forward to maintain project momentum and avoid pitfalls.

Lincoln County Complete Vision to Action

This fall, a coalition of stakeholders from Lincoln County and Greenfield Trust joined together with partners from the EPA, Nevada Department of Environmental Quality, the Nature Conservancy, and the Bureau of Land Management to engage and empower the community towards a vision for redevelopment of the former Caselton Mine. CCLR led a Vision to Action for the site and facilitated two major workshops that captured the issues, needs, and solutions. The result is a plan for historic preservation, habitat restoration, recreation, and solar energy. The plan will be used to support applications for EPA Brownfield Revitalization Funding, master trails planning, and tourism efforts.

City of Plummer & Coeur d’Alene Tribe Complete Vision to Action

Tribal Member and Employee Ayanna James looks at design alternatives at V2A Workshop

This summer the City of Plummer and the Coeur d’Alene Tribe joined together to advance the redevelopment of a 33-acre former brownfield in the center of town. CCLR led a Vision to Action for the site, where we facilitated community engagement events and developed a plan for the site. This plan was used to support applications for EPA Brownfield Revitalization Funding and a Community Change Grant. Watch the video on the Plummer Vision to Action process.

CCLR Reviews an Organization-Wide Record Number of EPA Brownfield Grant Applications

The FY25 EPA brownfield grant solicitation period ended on November 14th. CCLR staff and consultants reviewed a record 60 grant applications from EPA Regions 9 and 10. Awards will be announced next year and we look forward to assisting future-grantees with implementation of their projects. The FY26 funding cycle, which should include Multipurpose, Assessment and Cleanup grants, is anticipated to be the last round of increased funding made possible by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We encourage you to pursue an EPA FY26 grant, and to connect with CCLR early in 2025 (especially for cleanup grants!) so we can ensure you are ready to submit a compelling grant application in November 2025.

CCLR’s team looks forward to continuing to support your land reuse project and collaborate on actionable solutions in 2025 and beyond. We remain confident that brownfield reuse will remain an important component to progress, and that together we can create the safe, healthy and vibrant communities we all deserve. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year from your partners at CCLR.