Nassau County Brownfield's Redevelopment Program
What are brownfields?
Brownfields are sites with the potential for development or reuse, but remain unused or underused because of known or suspected environmental contamination.
What is Nassau County trying to accomplish?
The primary objective of the Brownfields Redevelopment Program is to facilitate redevelopment of these sites. Doing so will provide such economic benefits as creating jobs, increasing the municipal tax base, mitigating potential health or environmental risks, and maximizing existing infrastructure.
What is the brownfields redevelopment process?
In general, the process of redeveloping a brownfield involves assessing the site’s environmental conditions, ensuring necessary level of cleanup is achieved, and developing a plan for reuse.
Integral to this process are various stakeholders, including state/federal government, private investors/developers and the local community.
State and federal government entities set the environmental standards and provide resources for assessment and remediation. Private investors commit to redeveloping the sites in a manner which maximizes economic, environmental and social benefits to the community. The County’s program relies heavily upon input from the local community to determine redevelopment options.
Current Initiatives
NY Metro Brownfields Redevelopment Fund Program is an innovative public-private partnership comprised of Nassau County; the City of New York; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation; the not-for-profit organizations, New Partners for Community Revitalization, Inc, and Sustainable Long Island.
The Fund Program is designed to support community revitalization goals through the cleanup and re-use of brownfield sites in distressed neighborhoods throughout the New York metropolitan region. This is the first regional remediation financing mechanism in the country to use federal grants to leverage private loan capital for brownfield projects, whereby EPA funds are used as loan guarantees for cleanup loans originated by the private sector.
Coes Neck - 35-acre County-owned site on Coes Neck Road in Baldwin. The site is currently vacant. Known prior uses of the site include a sand and gravel mining operation in the 1950s, waste disposal site and an asphalt plant in the 1960s and 1970s. Nassau County condemned the site in 1977, at which point it was designated for development as a storm-water basin.
Environmental site assessments at Coes Neck are set to begin in July 2005. Once the environmental conditions have been determined, the County will partner closely with local community organizations and prospective developers to determine a reuse plan.
NUMC Freeport/Roosevelt Health Center – Located at on North Main Street in Roosevelt, this 26,300-square-foot lot is currently vacant. Known prior uses of the lot include a restaurant and dwellings (northern portion) and a gas station (southern portion). The lot is situated across the street from the Roosevelt Health Clinic, and is currently used primarily for clinic parking.
The fully assessed and remediated site will be the future location of the Nassau University Medical Center (NUMC) Freeport/Roosevelt Health Center.
Tax Delinquent Properties – This initiative aims to identify tax-delinquent brownfields for which there is a low likelihood that the lien will be paid, collect environmental information about the site, and transfer the property to an interested party for the purpose of being developed to meet a public need.
Contact Information
For more information regarding Nassau County’s Brownfields Redevelopment Program, please contact:
Rosemary Olsen, Director
Amalya Winters, Brownfields Program Coordinator
Nassau County Office of Economic Development
40 Main Street 3rd Floor
Hempstead NY 11550
Telephone: (516) 572 – 1918
Facsimile: (516) 572 – 1991
Email: awinters@nassaucountyny.gov
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