“Brownfields” offer opportunities for parks, businesses, jobs
By Anthony Moran
amoran@hunter.cuny.edu
The brightly-colored murals Tats Cru painted on the wall of The Point Community Development Corporation add character to the east side of Garrison Avenue between Manida and Barretto streets, but the other side of the street is a blighted vacant lot.
Surrounded by a chain-link fence, its uneven surface is covered with crushed rock and littered with beer bottles and soda cans. Immediately to the west, traffic whizzes by on the elevated Bruckner Expressway.
A team of community organizations hopes to change that, by banding together in an effort they hope will lead to the redevelopment of polluted land in Hunts Point and Soundview.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has awarded $349,360 to five community organizations to study ways to reclaim contaminated land in Hunts Point and Soundview, including the banks of the Bronx River and the East River and lots like the one on Garrison Street alongside the Bruckner and Sheridan expressways. All-told, the group plans to investigate 150-200 sites in an 800-acre area.
Four of the organizations–Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, The Point, Sustainable South Bronx and the Pratt Institute–have been involved in efforts to create waterfront parks and the South Bronx Greenway.
While they hope to continue to tap the waterfront for recreation, now they have also joined with the Bronx Overall Development Corporation, an arm of the borough president’s office, to devise ways to create housing and jobs and strengthen the local economy by making land that is no longer being used safe and productive again.
Many in the community hope to see both more parks and more businesses, according to Adam Liebowitz, a community development associate at The Point, and program director of A.C.T.I.O.N., the Point’s teen community leadership program.
“We hope to bring all the positive things to Hunts Point, like cultural art centers, local jobs, and open spaces–all good stuff. We want to avoid things like storage units and prisons,” said Liebowitz.
The coalition plans a forum for residents to learn what they would like to see change. What the organizers call a “visionary meeting” will be held in Hunts Point “very soon,” said Tawkiyah Jordan, director of community development and planning for Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice.
First, though, she said, the group needs to complete its “micro-analysis on the South Bronx waterfront”– research to determine the actual potential of the sites, which are called “brownfields.”
A “brownfield” is land that can’t be used because it is or may be contaminated. The New Fulton Fish Market, which moved to Hunts Point from Manhattan in 2005, is an example of a brownfield clean-up.
For 30 years, Consolidated Edison used the land where the fish market now stands to manufacture gas for heating and cooking, storing millions of tons of coal on the site. When Con Ed left, it left behind 38,000 tons of coal tar and other contaminants. It took four years and $12 million to make the site fit for a new use.
The abandoned concrete plant between the Sheridan Expressway and the Bronx River, is another example of a brownfield being cleaned up and used for a new purpose. It is now being turned into a park.
Among the sites the coalition wants to study is the former Oak Point rail yard on the East River, including the land that is the object of a tug-of-war between the city and neighborhood-based opponents over the city’s plan to build a jail there. Sustainable South Bronx and the Greenworkers Cooperative have proposed creating an industrial park for recycling construction materials there, and Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr. has called for a new police academy to built instead of a jail.
The funds to study Oak Point and the scores of other sites come from the state’s Brownfield Opportunity Areas Program, created in 2003 and administered jointly by the DEC and the state Department of State’s Division of Coastal Resources. Under the program, the state pays up to 90 percent of the cost of surveying sites that may be contaminated.
Once an area is identified, the community organizations analyze economic and market trends to identify potential new uses for, and then develop a strategy to reclaim the land. The South Bronx coalition hopes to have its recommendations ready by June.
Parallel efforts have begun in Port Morris under the auspices of the SoBRO Development Corporation and on the Bronx side of the Harlem River, where the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality recently completed its study, the first to be finished under the Brownfield Opportunities Areas program.
It is a long process. The Harlem River study, turned over to the DEC at the end of February, took three years to complete, and implementing its recommendations will take years more.
Even when a study is completed, there is no guarantee that the community’s recommendations will be followed, Tawkiyah Jordan cautioned. But by developing a consensus, the coalition hopes to build momentum for change.
Jordan and Liebowitz stressed the importance of people in the community making their voices heard. “It’s an exciting new state run program with the opportunity for community members to express their concerns.
The “visionary meetings” (a schedule will be announced on-line in The Hunts Point Express and on the web sites of The Point www.thepoint.org and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice www.ympj.org) “offer the community access to shape their community as they may envision. It is a chance to really have a say,” said Liebowitz.