[CPEO-BIF] New York State-EPA Place-Based Regional Collaboration Pilot

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

New Partners for Community Revitalization
For Immediate Release:
December 2, 2009


City, State, and Federal Partnerships Highlight Annual Community 
Revitalization Forum

New York Secretary of State Announces New Partnership with Federal Agencies

New York City - (December 2, 2009) - Secretary of State Lorraine 
Cortes-Vazquez announced today a new initiative, the Place-Based 
Regional Collaboration Pilot, which strengthens the partnership between 
New York State and the federal government to advance community 
revitalization. The Secretary was joined today by the United States 
Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Transportation 
in making the announcement at the New Partners for Community 
Revitalization 2nd Annual Brownfields Forum. Today's announcement marks 
a new avenue of state-federal collaboration.

This announcement builds on and expands the Brownfields Smart Growth 
"Spotlight Communities" Initiative, announced last year by Governor 
David A. Paterson, which is a state-local partnership that capitalizes 
on commitments from existing state programs and resources to support the 
implementation of locally generated  Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA) 
Plans to advance neighborhood revitalization.  Brownfield Opportunity 
Area Plans use an area-wide approach, rather than the traditional site 
by site approach, to brownfield assessment and redevelopment. BOA 
enables communities to comprehensively assess existing economic and 
environmental conditions associated with brownfield blight and impacted 
areas, identify and prioritize community supported redevelopment 
opportunities, and to attract public and private investment to implement 
projects.

New York Secretary of State Lorraine Cortes-Vazquez said: "New York's 
Place-based Regional Collaboration Pilot will build on the important 
lessons learned about interagency cooperation. It is an excellent first 
step toward creating a bridge between the three existing Spotlight 
Communities and the other 100 communities participating in the BOA 
Program, where many could benefit from this coordinated attention across 
government agencies."

The Place-Based Regional Collaboration Pilot expands the partnership by 
involving three levels of government - local, state, and federal 
agencies - with community-based organizations. The partnership will 
enable important dialogue and collaboration with community leaders and 
will advance feasible projects through commitments of state and federal 
resources to achieve community revitalization. To launch the pilot, the 
Department of State and partner state and federal agencies will conduct 
a series of regional workshops over the next two years involving 
multiple communities that will focus on advancing feasible projects.

NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Pete 
Grannis, said: "New York's DEC strongly supports a community-based 
approach to brownfield redevelopment and continues to look for ways to 
advance BOA projects.  Inter-agency coordination is critical to help 
focus needed assistance and resources and we will enthusiastically 
participate."

New York's Place-Based Regional Collaboration Pilot closely corresponds 
with the Obama Administration's recently announced Partnership for 
Sustainable Communities. The President's plan creates collaboration 
among three federal agencies - Housing and Urban Development (HUD), 
Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Environmental Protection 
Agency (EPA) targeting federal resources to existing communities to make 
them more livable by promoting and providing affordable housing and 
transportation choices.

Looking to take advantage of new opportunities to promote community 
renewal, brownfields redevelopment, green jobs and economic growth, more 
than 250 city, state, and national redevelopment leaders came together 
for the event, New Directions in Brownfields: Building Sustainable 
Communities Through Stronger City, State, and Federal Partnerships. The 
forum was organized and led by New Partners for Community Revitalization 
(NPCR), a New York not-for-profit that works with community groups, 
developers, lenders, and government to develop innovative solutions to 
the disinvestment and decay associated with multiple brownfield sites in 
low income neighborhoods and communities of color. The event was hosted 
by National Grid at the energy company's New York City corporate office 
in Downtown Brooklyn's MetroTech Plaza.

NPCR Executive Director Jody Kass said, "The Place-Based Regional 
Collaboration Pilot announced today will improve the quality of life for 
tens of thousands of New Yorkers. This bottom-up approach turns regional 
planning on its head. It opens the door for an extraordinary regional 
discussion focused on synergies across communities in the context of 
local priorities. Key to this approach is the clearly articulated 
community driven plans and priorities that have been established over 
the last two years through the state's Brownfield Opportunity Area 
program. These local plans allow neighborhoods to come together in the 
spirit of regional cooperation instead of the traditional ambivalence 
and antagonism that frequently accompanies more conventional regional 
planning efforts."

"New York's regional collaboration represents at the state level the 
same type of interdisciplinary cooperation we are forging at the federal 
level through the new Partnership for Sustainable Communities between 
HUD, DOT and EPA," said John W. Frece, director of EPA's Smart Growth 
Program. "What you are doing in New York is exactly the kind of 
integrated, locally driven, regional planning that the Partnership for 
Sustainable Communities supports and should be considered a model for 
other communities, regions, and states."

Sharon Pugh, of the Department of Transportation's Federal Transit 
Administration, stated, "The leadership steps that New York State is 
taking are steps DOT hopes will be implemented across the Nation.  We 
want to help citizens advance local and regional priorities for 
revitalizing and strengthening their communities and transportation 
services.  DOT will work with New York to ensure that this program 
succeeds, and offer you greater flexibility in determining how federal 
transportation dollars are spent.  This is what the Federal Partnership 
is all about."

David Lloyd, EPA's Director of Brownfields and Land Revitalization 
Office, said, "EPA is now reviewing our grant programs with an eye to 
ensuring that the country's brownfield resources become more flexible, 
that they are targeted to projects that reflect local needs, and are 
utilized by projects that need the resources to advance sustainable 
neighborhoods."

Babylon Town Supervisor Steve Bellone said, "We are poised to take 
advantage of this Pilot in Wyandanch, where we have been working with 
the community for many years to make their vision for the future a 
reality.  The partnership between the local, state and federal 
governments will be the key to helping communities like Wyandanch 
achieve comprehensive and sustainable revitalization."

"Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice and our partners in the South 
Bronx Waterfront BOA have worked hard this past year to advance our 
community priorities with the Department of State through the Spotlight 
Communities Initiative," said YMPJ Executive Director Alexie 
Torres-Fleming. "The announcement of a new federal-state community 
redevelopment partnership focused on interagency cooperation around 
local community priorities is good news for neglected, low income 
communities such as ours, where the demand for environmental justice 
remains to be met. I see this kind of partnership as a potentially 
powerful tool for change in our communities."

"Our experience shows that for many of the communities which have had to 
live with the worst of the environmental hazards left behind by earlier 
generations, the Brownfield Opportunity Area approach is the model 
program to get community-healthy revitalization projects moving," said 
Jim Tripp, NPCR Board Chair, and counsel to the Environmental Defense Fund.

National Grid Vice President for Energy Solution Services Metro New York 
Joe Rende said, "Safeguarding the environment for future generations is 
part of National Grid's vision, and supporting redevelopment of 
brownfields is essential to bringing action to that vision. National 
Grid is happy to host NPCR's 2nd Annual Brownfields Forum. We applaud 
NPCR for bringing together community, commercial, government and 
nonprofit partners to discuss policies, programs and projects to build 
sustainable communities."

Brownfields are contaminated legacy properties left over from the 
industrial growth of previous generations. Many of New York's 
neighborhoods are plagued by multiple brownfield sites, making area-wide 
revitalization strategies much more important and effective than the old 
one-site-at-a-time cleanup approach. Through its BOA program, New York 
State has pioneered the area-wide community empowerment approach to 
neighborhood renewal. Since its creation in 2003, over a hundred 
communities across New York have qualified to be part of the BOA 
program. Representatives of BOA projects across the state participated 
in the NPCR Forum today.


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Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
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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