Last week, Smart Growth America (SGA) hosted a webinar as part of their ongoing series about equitable development. This webinar focused on brownfields and their redevelopment. GOPC was able to participate in this webinar and gain insight on a range is issues, including environmental justice and equity related to brownfield cleanup and reuse policy and practices.

Presenters noted that, too often, brownfield cleanup and redevelopment, a policy GOPC actively supports, has the unintended consequence of driving-away local residents due to increased property value and diminished job opportunities. The webinar was focused on ways that these consequences can be avoided while still addressing the need to clean-up the brownfield to improve community health and create new opportunities for residential and economic development.

The keynote presentation was provided by Elizabeth Yeampierre, an internationally recognized environmental/climate justice leader from New York City, who is the Executive Director of UPROSE, Brooklyn’s oldest Latino community-based organization, that promotes sustainability and resiliency through community organizing, education, leadership development and cultural/artistic expression. Yeampierre spoke about the work UPROSE has done in Sunset Park, a neighborhood in the southwestern part of Brooklyn that includes a significant brownfield, the result of manufacturing and industrial activities in the area dating from the early 1900s. UPROSE has led an anti-displacement campaign in the area, working with the City of New York, to protect and expand career-track manufacturing jobs, protect working class residents from displacement, and develop the area for climate resilience. This work has been guided by six principles:

1. Ensure community control over infrastructure and planning projects

2. Protect the economic needs of long-term residents, workers, and businesses

3. Expand blue-collar union, career-track jobs

4. Promote the development of maritime-dependent industrial uses

5. Protect land zoned for manufacturing

6. Incorporate climate adaptation and resiliency into waterfront development.  

Following the keynote, a second presentation was provided by Jacqueline Flin, Executive Director at the A. Philip Randolph Institute San Francisco. Flin and the Institute have been working with the City of San Francisco on the redevelopment of India Basin, an area also known as Butchertown due to the numerous slaughterhouses, tanneries, and animal processing facilities that were the first industries established in the area. The southern part of India Basin was used by small boat builders. The site eventually became a landfill following the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, and continued in this capacity until 1965. Eventually, the area received a soil cap and, following the approval of a plan by the Port of San Francisco, a terminal for Pacific Far East Lines was built in the area, along with a U.S. Postal Service Processing and Distribution Facility. Today, work is underway to remediate and restore the area, bring back wetland functions, improve ecosystem services, and enhance recreation opportunities in the area, with an emphasis on ensuring that the thousands of units of public and affordable housing that either exist or are planned within a mile of the future park remain affordable and do not adversely impact the existing residents in the area due to significantly rising property value that could result from the revitalization and redevelopment of the area.

The insights provided by the speakers presented new concepts and valuable perspectives which will help to inform GOPCs work as we continue to champion brownfield investment and redevelopment while also working more to promote equity not only in our own work, but in the work of the partners we engage with as part of our work across Ohio.

Thanks to Smart Growth America for hosting this informative webinar. To view the entire presentation, visit SGA’s YouTube page.