What Is a Brownfield?
At F&V, we help communities and developers with brownfield redevelopment to make communities safer, create jobs, and increase the tax base. Discover more about these sites, how we address impediments to redevelopment, and why this ultimately benefits communities across Michigan.
A brownfield is a property that has some sort of disadvantage to redevelopment. This could be contamination, blighted buildings, or other issues that may cause problems with its redevelopment.
Work with F&V for Brownfield Redevelopment
To see how our brownfield redevelopment services can help your community, contact us today.
Properties qualify as brownfields in Michigan under Act 381 for the following reasons:
Contamination
Properties that are defined as a “facility” under Part 201 of the NREPA (Act 451). A facility is land that has contamination in excess of unrestricted residential land use.
Functional obsolescence
When a property is no longer suitable for the purpose it originally had, we consider it functionally obsolete. One example of this is a medical building whose hallways are too narrow to meet modern ADA compliance requirements.
Blighted
This term refers to properties that are an attractive nuisance to children, have had utilities permanently disconnected, or contain buried debris that poses an impairment to construction.
Historic resource
Most of the properties falling into this category are historic buildings in established historic districts, which have their own sets of redevelopment requirements.
Housing developments
This recent amendment to Act 381 adds housing development as a qualifying definition for a brownfield. Housing developments can include multi-family housing or single-family houses and can be for rent or sale.
Industries
How Can Brownfields Be Redeveloped?
Brownfield redevelopment involves many possible types of redevelopment. However, multiple different groups may end up leading the cleanup initiatives. Here are the most common scenarios we see at F&V.
In many cases, the businesses leading private-led site redevelopment projects are land developers planning to offer new commercial or residential properties on the site. However, other types of private businesses—such as utility providers, manufacturers, or other large companies—may also lead these initiatives for community engagement.
Brownfield Redevelopment
Projects
FAQs
One of the primary differences between a brownfield and a Superfund site is the type of funding being used to remediate them. The term “Superfund” applies to properties that are regulated under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA). These are sites that have been deemed eligible for funding with federal remediation, either through short-term or long-term treatment.
By contrast, the EPA’s definition of a brownfield constitutes any site where contamination is present, or if there is a threat of possible contamination. Within Michigan, the Brownfield Redevelopment Financing Act is a unique program designed to remediate brownfields left over from industrial use, especially in areas that are candidates for economic development.