Talking Together

Brownfields Redevelopment

There are many parts of the Niagara Region where soil and groundwater quality has been impacted by previous industrial uses. Participants identified the obstacles to reuse of these properties and sketched a framework for action for improving their attractiveness to investment.

Overall, participants saw in the reuse of old industrial lands a combined opportinity, not only to improve the environment, but to create menaingful new jobs, restore local tax bases, and develop a new sense of place by celebrating local heritage and reconneting dererlict lands to surrounding communities.

They stated a number of key premises. There is a lot oa acreage. Much of it is strategically located on waterfronts and served by infrastructure. These sites offer the opportunity ot pursue economic, environmental, and comunity goals simultaneously. The regional economic situation (NFTA, tourism, recent investments, etc.) offers new potential to trigger action on these sites.

There are a number of issues to resolve. "Greenfield" sites are often cheaper to develop because of legal issues attached to brownfields. The real estate market in Erie an dnIagara counties is weak, so there is little stimulus for redevelopment. A comprehensive, visionary strategy - integrating economy, ecology, and community - could attract the new capital we need.

Each strategy has a distinct focus, but both emphasized the need for defining a common vision, creating a regional plan, and making incremental progress.

Specifically, it was recommended that we:

Work to improve tools for transformation — regionally — with a plan that integrates economic development, ecological improvement, and community objectives.That means providing financial incentives such as tax credits, job re-training, and ED Zone designations, while making the decision-making process “transparent” and geared to build consensus.

Implement demonstration projects using “brownfields as a canvas for new possibilities.” We need to frame the vision, make a plan, inventory sites, prioritize innovative ideas for reclamation and reuse, address the legal barriers, coordinate action, and make sure the public knows about the successes.

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Knowledge-Based Industries

Participants in the discussion on knowledge based industries saw the opportunity to make knowledge the key value-adding component of the regional economy and a generator for new job creation. They suggested we could use our problems as a resource in the sense that problems help us produce know­ledge as we work to solve them.

Pursuing this strategy would mean working to link universities, corporations, govern­ment, and communities in this process. It would also mean making quality of life a key issue, as a way of drawing and keeping brain-workers, and as something these new industries would help produce.The proposed next steps were simply to ”go to work.” If we start work­ing on the problems at hand, everything we need to decide about partners, processes, organization, implementation and more, will fall into place.

Included in the specific strategies for developing knowledge-based industries were: creating a “brownfields insti­tute” and market ourselves as “the guys who solved Love Canal”; establishing a cross-border university or an alliance of institutions to begin to organize the know­ledge that comes from working on indigenous problems; developing industry-specific know­ledge, such as the knowledge that comes out of the region’s wine-making industry; developing and marketing knowledge about the “border business”; and establishing a “peace institute” or siting a unit of the United Nations here.

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