[CPEO-BIF] Cleaning Up Brownfields through Community Land Trusts

[Lenny Siegel <lsiegel@cpeo.org>]

[To download a formatted version of this Brownfield Brief as a 4.8 MB 
PDF file, go to http://www.cpeo.org/pubs/CLT.pdf.]
Cleaning Up Brownfields through Community Land Trusts

By Robert Hersh
April 2007

Many brownfield sites are clustered in poor neighborhoods. In such 
communities it is not uncommon to find boarded up shop fronts and empty 
buildings, where businesses once operated. The signs of disinvestment 
can also extend to housing, leaving neighborhoods with a glut of 
abandoned houses and vacant lots. Few if any of these sites individually 
can yield the returns necessary to attract private or public investment. 
But more pernicious perhaps are the broader off-site impacts of these 
brownfields clusters - reduced property values for adjacent and nearby 
properties, the perception of contamination, and fears of liability - 
which can overwhelm efforts by community groups to revitalize 
neighborhoods.
Against these odds community residents and local groups are trying to 
find ways through collective action to clean up and redevelop 
brownfields. Over the past few years, at CPEO's regional workshops in 
Jersey City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houma, and Worcester, community 
participants have repeatedly stated that they want to initiate, 
influence, and, in some cases, act as developers for brownfields 
projects in their neighborhoods.
For neighborhood groups addressing brownfield clusters is a complex 
undertaking. The properties are often a mixed bag; they can range from 
those in public hands acquired through tax delinquency to privately held 
properties subject to substantial tax lien. They may also include 
parcels where owners, concerned about liability for any cleanup, have 
chosen to mothball their properties to avoid regulatory scrutiny. 
Perhaps even more daunting are the institutional demands a 
community-based organization faces when it attempts to broaden its 
mission and rebuild blighted neighborhoods. These include:
* Overcoming limited political power that translates into limited claims 
for public financing for site assessment, acquisition or cleanup.
* Dealing with a lack of information about site conditions and possible 
contamination, making it more difficult to prioritize parcels for 
cleanup and redevelopment.
* Developing the organizational capacity to revitalize brownfields 
clusters while maintaining connection to the community over time.
* Staying accountable to local residents while accruing power to have an 
impact on community development.
* Competing with private sector developers for properties that are of 
interest to community residents. (The "gentrifying markets" reference 
wasn't clear.)
This CPEO brownfields brief discusses how community land trusts (CLTs) 
have addressed the challenges and, more specifically, how they have been 
used as a vehicle to revitalize brownfields.
What is a Community Land Trust?

A community land trust (CLT) is an independent, nonprofit organization 
formed to acquire and hold land for the benefit of people who live in 
the local community. CLTs operate at different scales. Some work within 
a single neighborhood to spur comprehensive redevelopment; others focus 
their efforts more on assembling and leasing land to preserve housing 
affordability across a city or metropolitan region. Regardless of the 
scope of their activities, CLTs have a similar mission: a) to maintain 
the affordability of housing for local residents over the long term; b) 
to preserve the value of public investment for community benefit; and c) 
to build a strong platform for community action by helping low-income 
people stabilize their lives and build equity in the community.
While housing is the most common use of CLT land - the roughly 160 CLTs 
in the country have built and oversee more than 5,000 unit of housing - 
the CLT model can be applied to brownfields. The Sawmill Community Land 
Trust of Albuquerque, New Mexico, formed to protect local residents from 
gentrification pressures, worked with the city to take title to 27 acres 
of contaminated and blighted property close to the city center. This 
comprehensive revitalization effort includes housing, a park, plaza, 
community center, offices, retail space, manufacturing, senior 
apartments, and live/work spaces for home businesses. The Dudley Street 
Neighborhood Initiative in Boston received eminent domain power from the 
city to acquire a number of vacant parcels and buildings, and over the 
past decade it has developed both affordable housing and commercial 
enterprises on former brownfields. And, as we describe in more detail 
below, the Burlington Community Land Trust (BCLT) in Vermont, the 
largest CLT in the country, has been able to redevelop brownfields 
parcels in the city as part of an area-wide community development 
initiative.
Area-wide brownfield redevelopment in Burlington, Vermont

The Burlington Community Land Trust (BCLT) has been able to stay 
accountable to local residents and clean up and transform contaminated 
properties in its target neighborhood, the Old North End of Burlington. 
In the two decades since its inception, the BCLT has built some 500 
units of affordable housing, two small urban parks, and facilities for a 
variety of community organizations such as a neighborhood food pantry, a 
legal aid office, and a technology center, and many of these facilities 
were built on brownfields.
According to BCLT's executive director Brenda Torpy:

"It's our job to develop the properties that nobody else wants. That's 
community development. When you come from a small, grassroots place you 
have to be willing to believe that you can have some power on behalf of 
the people you serve. For some of the brownfields sites in our 
neighborhood the cleanup costs rose so much some of our lenders said 
we're not going to fund it. I said what do you expect is going to happen 
on this block if this brownfields stays here... if you're going to try 
to fix this neighborhood you can't leave any of these brownfields out 
there."
The BCLT, like other community land trusts, typically acts as a 
mediating institution in its target neighborhoods. As an owner of 
property the BCLT acquires land to hold it in trust for neighborhood 
residents; as a brownfield developer it can act as a bridge to help 
communities, private investors, and the public sector negotiate new 
relationships about property and ownership.
The BCLT, as a nonprofit, membership-based organization, acquires and 
holds land for the benefit of people who live in the local community. 
The land trust model is premised on a radically different concept of 
property ownership, one which treats land and buildings differently. In 
an affordable housing project, the BCLT acquires the land and holds 
permanent title to it, while the homebuyer purchases only the house. 
When homeowners decide to move out of their house, they receive 25% of 
any increased equity. The other 75% goes to the CLT, which uses this 
share to help subsidize the down-payment for a new round of low-income 
homebuyers or for other community uses. The CLT model tries to find a 
balance between individual and community benefits. The rationale for 
equity sharing is to prevent the privatization or removal of public 
subsidies, such as land donation or public investment, and to ensure 
that these resources are preserved for community benefit.
The BCLT also acquires and renovates commercial property. In these 
instances any buildings located on BCLT land or later built by the land 
trust are typically rented to non-profits at below market rates 
specified for unusually long terms. As the photograph below shows, the 
BCLT has been very active in brownfields redevelopment in the Old North End.
Of the four projects the BCLT has undertaken (see above), the Vermont 
Transit Bus Barns redevelopment is the most ambitious. For more than a 
hundred years, the Bus Barns site, a three acre property located at the 
gateway to Burlington's Old North End, had been a bus repair and 
maintenance facility. The owner of the site, Vermont Transit, wanted to 
move operations and was looking for a buyer. The site, however, was 
contaminated with petroleum hydrocarbons and solvents from years of 
routine bus maintenance activities. The BCLT knew the site was likely to 
be contaminated, but it also recognized the importance of the site to 
the revitalization of the entire neighborhood. It actively sought the 
property as a way to invest in the poorest neighborhood in the city. The 
BCLT aggressively moved on the site and negotiated a purchase and sale 
contract with Vermont Transit. With funding from the city of Burlington, 
the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and low income housing and 
historic tax credits, the BCLT was able to acquire the site.  To take on 
the complexity of the task and to shield itself from some of the risk 
associated with the cleanup and redevelopment of the site, the BCLT 
partnered with the city of Burlington as co-developer, and it created a 
limited partnership with Vermont Housing to control the property.
The site contained two historic brick barns and one large steel frame 
garage. The BCLT demolished the garage and constructed 15 new housing 
units. It converted one historic barn on the property into an additional 
10 units of affordable housing. The second barn was developed for 
commercial uses. It includes a laundromat and a garage that repairs 
donated cars and sells them at below market rates to low-income buyers.
For a community organization the Bus Barns brownfields project was a 
tremendous achievement. What lessons does it hold for other community 
groups?
First, the BCLT worked closely with the city of Burlington's Office of 
Community and Economic Development to obtain funding for initial site 
assessments that could help the land trust get a better handle on the 
extent and severity of contamination and likely cleanup costs. According 
to Brian Pine, assistant director of housing in Burlington:
"One of the biggest barriers to brownfields redevelopment is not having 
money to do site assessments. Nobody wants to risk money upfront for a 
site that might never be developed.... The city's way is to partner with 
the BCLT and to provide that initial risk capital. The hardest money to 
get into projects is the assessment money, the predevelopment money to 
hire the architect and engineer. That's the money we provide. We're a 
little piece of the whole pie, but we're in so early, we enable the rest 
of the pie to be made."
Second, as a membership organization the BCLT mobilized its 2,500 
members as source of activism and as means to help rewrite the state's 
brownfield laws. The BCLT was instrumental in helping to establish 
Vermont's Redevelopment of Contaminated Properties Program. Under the 
revised laws, as long as the BCLT or any prospective purchaser conducts 
a site assessment and cleanup of a brownfield in compliance with a state 
approved work plan, it will receive liability protection for any future 
costs associated with the discovery of additional contamination or 
changes in regulatory standards. Through political lobbying and the 
legislative process, the BCLT was able to change the state's 
environmental cleanup statutes and, in essence, draw a box around future 
liability at contaminated sites. Without this statutory change it is 
unlikely that the BCLT could have redeveloped any brownfields site in 
the Burlington.
And finally, through its community organizing and grassroots 
development, the BCLT has been able to balance the need to get 
brownfield deals done while remaining accountable to its membership. As 
Brenda Torpy put it, "the real strength of a community land trust is 
having a board that includes residents of your homes and general 
members. And so what our members have accomplished around the state is 
to build big constituencies in support of affordable housing and 
community development."
--


Lenny Siegel
Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
c/o PSC, 278-A Hope St., Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650/961-8918 or 650/969-1545
Fax: 650/961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org


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