Niagara County, New York

Project Description

In the summer of 2023, Niagara County’s Center for Economic Development requested assistance to streamline all its existing inventories into a singular source that could capture important details from hundreds of brownfields across six municipalities.

Niagara County, NY has nearly 600 brownfield sites and even more data on them all. Many of its inventories were developed in PDF documents written over the last two decades. As time passes, new information is collected, new records compiled, and fragments of old and new inventories for different areas can quickly pile up into a jumbled mess.

With help from CCLR, the county transformed scattered, static data into a centralized Geographic Information System (GIS) system that evolves with every new bit of information. This new system will make it easier for the County to market brownfield properties for redevelopment and reduce uncertainty for potential purchasers.

Building on a GIS database the team at Niagara County had developed slowly over many years, CCLR’s Senior Technical Consultant Norman Wright assembled existing information on what is known as a “parcel” layer. The parcel layer is essentially a digital map of all subdivided properties in a jurisdiction. Almost all communities can find their parcel data on an active GIS mapping software provided by their County’s assessor office. Using a copy of this map, CCLR created a new inventory for Niagara’s GIS server that puts all the relevant information for each brownfield site into the “parcel” or property record that contains the shape, size, and location. By mapping each brownfield in this fashion, anyone can get a clear view of the terrain and accurately visualize the footprint of any brownfield in their area.

Once complete, the CCLR team sent the information back to Niagara County in the form of a new GIS map layer. The database the map is built upon is structured like a spreadsheet. With some modest training, the GIS software allows County staff to maintain the information with a few quick steps. Better still, the spreadsheet functionality allows the staff to generate many different reports that can sort and identify their properties on any of the variables provided by the framework.

View the Niagara County GIS Story Map

This type of inventory empowers an adept program administrator, like Niagara County’s Brownfields Manager, Amy Schifferli, AICP, to see their brownfields more like a “portfolio” of assets to manage, leverage, and promote. The inventory gives Schifferli a broader view of the County’s needs and allows her to be strategic on when and where to focus her efforts for the next big success.

Read more about CCLR’s work in Niagara County on our blog, and check our recorded webinar “Making Your Market: How Creating a Brownfield Inventory can Bring Redevelopment Opportunities to Life,” to see drone footage of some of the Brownfield sites included in Niagara’s inventory! And read CCLR’s Guide to Revitalizing Underutilized Properties.