At a recent gathering of commercial brokers, a city environmental planner asked how many people in the group had properties in their portfolios that might scare off potential buyers.
Few raised their hands.
“Those are the types of properties we need to hear about, and if you didn’t want to acknowledge it here by all means if you do have some of those properties that are old, abandoned commercial or industrial properties we’d like to hear about them, and we may be able to help you with those,” said Philip Prete, who in addition to being a senior environmental planner for the city of Wilmington is also the city’s brownfields program manager.
Prete was speaking during the March 3 meeting in Wilmington of the Realtors Commercial Alliance of Southeastern North Carolina in an effort to get the word out about federal grant funds available to the city to help property owners figure out whether the land they own might be a brownfield. Emphasizing the word “potential,” Prete said a brownfield is a site for which redevelopment might be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant or contaminant.
Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that Wilmington would receive up to $400,000 through 2017 to help cover research reporting costs associated with brownfield sites.
Part of the Brownfields and Land Revitalization Grant, the grant allows $200,000 for petroleum assessment to address areas that once housed gas stations or petroleum storage facilities and another $200,000 for hazardous substance assessment on sites that housed manufacturing or heavy industrial activity, according to a previous Greater Wilmington Business Journal story.
“What we can do is, if we find sites that are brownfield sites we can do phase 1, phase 2 assessments, cleanup planning and redevelopment planning on those sites,” Prete explained to the commercial realtors group. “We’re able to go and get the environmental due diligence you need to make lenders happy, to make financiers happy and to make prospective developers less leery about the particular property.”
Harold Thurston of Amec Foster Wheeler, the firm under contract with the city to do technical work under the grant program, also talked during the March 3 meeting about the benefits to property owners of using the grant.
“I have so many tools at my disposal to get these sites through the process and get them redeveloped without causing headaches to the current owner or the responsible party,” Thurston said.
He said there’s no reason for property owners to be afraid that the EPA will seize their land or that the costs of cleanup, if any pollutant or hazardous material is even found, will be enormous.
“Nine times out of 10 it costs very little,” Thurston said.
In other cases, no remediation is necessary because no problems exist, Prete and Thurston said.
“We’re not interested in coming to find contamination, we’re interested in coming to rule out contamination or help minimize the risks from contamination,” Prete said.
Participating in the program can take longer than using a private consultant, Prete said, because of the need for EPA approval.
“The difference is, you’re using your money if you do it that way,” he said.
The city brownfield program is planning to launch a website, Prete said, to highlight properties that have gone through the process and have been cleared or have a remediation plan in place. He said he’d like to include additional properties that have received clearance even if they did not go through the grant program.
“Through the city’s website, we can help you get those properties out there with a focus on redevelopment,” Prete said.