>> JAMES HARLESS: When you're doing an environmental
assessment of one of these properties, it
is both an art and a science. If you have
something like a gasoline service station,
the tanks are going to be buried, they may
be 10 feet down at the bottom; you could have
a leak at the bottom. Typically, what we will
do if somebody's going to buy a piece of property,
whether it's a bank foreclosing or a developer
coming in to redevelop a brownfield, we need
to understand the environmental impacts that
are on the site; number one for the liability
protection issue, but number two, to make
sure that we know what has to be done to use
this site safely in the future. When they
abandoned this property, did they empty the
gas tanks; the underground storage tanks?
You can see on the ground there are some blue
hatches where they'll take the cover off.
That's where the filling nozzles are for the
tanks. We will actually put a probe down in
the tank to see if there's liquid in there.
If that gasoline is left in there, it can
continue to leak. So one of the first things
we want to do on a site like this is to empty
the tanks.
>> ERIC SCHERTZING: We've had some conversations
with the gentleman that owns the place next
door where he's had some plans drawn up for
what a redevelopment into apartments and retail
might look like. He's doing those preliminary
things: what are the costs for this, what's
the potential funding for it, what are the
funding gaps, and how do you use the economic
development tools to try to make a dream a
reality?
>> STEVE WILLOBEE: We're looking at the Marshall
Street Armory, and what they're looking at
doing is redeveloping this structure to become
an area headquarters for five Michigan non-profit
associations. And look at the top of the structure...it
really takes on a characteristic of a castle;
a solid, fortress-type facility with the artillery
crossing at the top of the structure, and
with the subtle cuts towards the top of it
really gives that castle, fortress-type appearance.
>> JAMES HARLESS: We've done some initial
sampling out here, we know there's some metalsÉbut
so far, we haven't found anything that is
what I would call the real nightmare on this
particular site. And knowing the history of
its use, we really don't expect to find something
like that. But we're always observant, because
we've done a lot of projects, and SME has
found surprises on many of them. We do have
a little bit of a problem under the pavement.
And this is an example of a brownfield redevelopment
expense that's not environmental. This parking
lot is going to have to be addressed. It's
going to have to be updated, it's going to
have to be upgraded so that it's useful, and
quite frankly, this hole in the pavement looks
like it goes about a foot down. It's dangerous.
>> STEVE WILLOBEE: We're looking at things
that may be what's referred to as REC's: Recognized
Environmental Concerns. And on this property,
one of those was this location right here,
this concrete pad. But below it is the actual
vault where they stored all the coal for the
site to heat the building and so forth. So,
initially when we came on site, that kind
of popped out and we said, well, maybe there's
some environmental issues here, and one would
assume that. But based on the testing that
we did, it was noted that wasn't a strong
environmental concern and didn't require environmental
action to address. So, those are things that
you encounter. Although a developer or a firm
such as ourselves, SME has experience on these,
you can't make assumptions until you get the
data.
>> JAMES HARLESS: We're taking a situation
where you're not getting taxes now, we're
putting something new and healthy on the property,
you're generating other business development
around it, you're generating revenue streams
from the people working there; and then you're
just deferring a little bit on capturing the
tax benefit from that development; taxes that
you wouldn't have anyway. What we at SME do
is help developers and help communities put
these packages together of some state money,
some local money, some federal money to get
the best deal for both the community and the
developer to help finance these extra costs
of brownfield redevelopment.
