A cursory reading of the press releases and news reports blanketing the media make one thing about real estate crystal clear: the evil industry is gobbling up green space like never before, creating concrete jungles and unhealthy neighborhoods all over America.

Or so the environmental contingent out there wants you to believe.

But a new report by ECS points out that land reuse is experiencing a nationwide renaissance, with more than 74 square miles of land currently being recycled.

“As communities struggle with curbing sprawl and preserving their green space, the good news is that many are making a lot of progress in reusing land or cleaning it up and returning it to productive use,” said Bob Hallenbeck, senior vice president of government affairs for ECS. “Reusing 74 square miles of land is a major step in the right direction. We are seeing just the tip of the iceberg in a movement that can put a significant amount of land back to good use and preserve other land from development.”

The ECS Land Reuse Report provides a snapshot of national and regional trends in the reuse of contaminated land through a media coverage review about these activities. The complete report is available on-line at www.ecsinc.com/landreuse.

“From the stories reported this year, it’s evident that brownfields redevelopment has become a mainstream real estate trend,” said ECS’ Hallenbeck. “Overall, communities and developers appear more comfortable in handling the issues involved with brownfields development. The opportunities appear lucrative for businesses and promise to bring back prosperity to many communities. States are working hard to make these things happen.”

Some of the trends pinpointed by the report are quite telling. For example, northeastern states with their disproportionately high concentration of contaminated sites, are currently most active in last reuse. According to the report, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan and Massachusetts demonstrate “the most progressive” approaches to brownfields redevelopment.

Once land is targeted for use, it is most likely to be used to mixed-use projects. Of the 240 sites reviewed, more than 45 percent will be mixed-use developments including office, retail, cultural, recreational, residential, public and/or industrial space.

Otherwise, about 22 percent of reused lands are dedicated to industrial uses, 8 percent to offices, 7 percent to cultural or recreational uses, 6 percent for retail, 5 percent for residential and 8 percent for other uses.

An important emerging trend is the involvement of private developers in constructing or renovating facilities that are intended for lease or sale. Private developers are working on approximately 76 percent of sites, compared to only 26 percent in a similar 1999 study. In fact, the larger the site, the more likely work was developer-driven.

Here’s a shocker. Despite the tangled Web of assignment of guilt by federal government agencies in pollution cases, in only 10 of 135 cases reviewed did the entity responsible for causing pollution on a site pay for even a portion of environmental remediation. I would love to know where the EPA was on the other 125 cases.

But the good news is that non-polluting entities willingly paid for cleanup expenses in the remaining 125 cases, hoping the value of the developed land would more than offset the costs of remediation. And in some cases, governments agencies (a.k.a. taxpayer dollars) were contributed to help fund cleanup efforts.

The moral of this story? Developers are not the big bad wolf. What’s more, it doesn’t always take governmental intervention to solve problems. The motive to make a profit is a good thing when it encourages private developers to rescue and reuse our nation’s abused lands.

Published: September 13, 2000

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Lesley Hensell covers commercial real estate and financial issues for Realty Times. Based outside of Dallas, Lesley works with high-tech and real estate clients as an independent marketing and public relations consultant. She also writes for several publications, including the Dallas Morning News. E-mail Lesley at: lhensell@earthlink.net