Uncategorized

Senator Frank Lautenberg’s legacy of support for America’s towns and cities

By ·

Senator Frank Lautenberg
Senator Frank Lautenberg (center) with supporters and colleagues in Paterson, NJ in 2008. Photo by Tony Fischer via Flickr.

Senator Frank Lautenberg led on an incredible range of issues during his five terms in the Senate. Creating stronger towns and cities—in New Jersey and across the country—was just one of them.

Transportation was a touchstone issue for Lautenberg during his time in office. As chair of the Surface Transportation, Merchant Marine Infrastructure, Safety, & Security Subcommittee, Lautenberg championed passenger and high-speed rail service, especially for intercity travel and urban transit. One such project was New Jersey’s Hudson Bergen Light Rail line, which has brought commercial and residential development to the Hudson River waterfront and helped to improve the area’s neighborhoods. He worked to expand Amtrak and NJ Transit service, and helped secure funding to create NJ Transit’s Secaucus station, which now bears his name.

Uncategorized

Partnership in the News: Portland, Maine and EPA Launch Bikeshare Effort

By ·

Portland, Maine has begun to develop a regional bikeshare program thanks to initial technical assistance provided through the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities program.

Portland’s Planning and Urban Development Department applied for EPA’s 2013 grants under the leadership of Jeff Levine. Portland residents, Mr. Levine noticed, already had a strong interest in alternative transportation.

“There’s a big commitment in Portland toward the environment and sustainability,” said Levine. “The challenge is providing an infrastructure that can help people to meet that goal.”

Residents were interested in a bikeshare program, but Portland needed a catalytic event to kick-start the project.

EPA’s workshops and forums, conducted earlier this month, jumpstarted the city’s efforts to implement a bikeshare program. Mr. Levine believes EPA’s time in Maine brought a necessary and “strong focus on the issue”. Residents and local officials  participated in the sessions strategizing how Portland can make a bikeshare program a reality. With the project underway, Portland and the project’s supporters now must develop a business plan for a bikeshare program.

Uncategorized

Listen in: Building Better Budgets panel discussion

By ·

Building Better BudgetsYesterday Smart Growth America released new research on the savings and revenue of smart growth development. Building Better Budgets is the first report to aggregate local fiscal comparisons and determine a national average of how much communities can expect to save by using smart growth strategies.

To accompany the release we hosted a panel discussion of the new findings. If you weren’t able to join the event an archived version is now available at the link below.

Listen in: Click here to view the archived recording

Speaking on the panel were William Fulton, Vice President of Policy Development and Implementation, Smart Growth America; Rick Bernhardt, FAICP, CNU-A, Executive Director Metropolitan Nashville-Davidson County Planning Department; Mary Newsom, Associate Director of Urban and Regional Affairs at UNC Charlotte’s Urban Institute; and Chris Zimmerman, Member of Arlington County (VA) Board.

The panel discussion includes an overview of the findings and discussion of development strategies in Nashville, TN, Charlotte, NC, and Arlington, VA, as well as a question and answer session with panel attendees.

Read more about Building Better Budgets >>

Uncategorized

Building Better Budgets quantifies average savings and revenue of smart growth development

By ·

Building Better BudgetsLocal governments across the country have compared development strategies to understand their impact on municipal finances. These studies generally compare two or more different development scenarios, and help local leaders make informed decisions about new development based on the costs or revenues associated with them.

Many municipalities have found that a smart growth approach would improve their financial bottom line. Whether by saving money on upfront infrastructure; reducing the cost of ongoing services like fire, police and ambulance; or by generating greater tax revenues in years to come, community after community has found that smart growth development would benefit their overall financial health. Many of these findings have been made publicly available.

No national survey has examined these savings as a whole until now. This report is the first to aggregate those comparisons and determine a national average of how much other communities can expect to save by using smart growth strategies.

Building Better Budgets: A National Examination of the Fiscal Benefits of Smart Growth Development surveys 17 studies that compare different development scenarios, including a brand-new study of Nashville-Davidson County, TN, commissioned specifically for this report.

Uncategorized

Indiana finds a creative way to finance brownfields redevelopment

By ·

Indiana SEP
Straughter Body Shop prior to demolition and remediation (left) and after (right). The project was made possible by SEP funding. Photos via Meredith Gramelspacher.

The following is a guest post from Meredith Gramelspacher, Director and General Counsel of the
Indiana Brownfields Program

Indiana’s toolbox for creative brownfields financing includes one source that is seldom used outside of Indiana: Supplemental Environmental Projects.

Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) are used by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM) Office of Enforcement in negotiating settlements of enforcement cases. These environmentally-beneficial project improve, protect, or reduce risks to public health or the environment. A regulated entity agrees to undertake the project in further settlement of an enforcement action, but which the regulated entity is not otherwise legally required to perform. In certain cases, IDEM agrees to allow a respondent to make a cash payment of an agreed-upon dollar amount directly to the Indiana Finance Authority in lieu of an assessed civil penalty for use on a brownfield project in the city, town or county in which the violation underlying the enforcement action occurred. The Indiana Brownfields Program then coordinates with the beneficiary community to select a brownfield property at which to utilize the SEP Funds consistent with Brownfield SEP guidelines.

Uncategorized

Now Available: What the BUILD Act could build webinar archive

By ·

711 Canal Street in Stamford, CT. Image courtesy of Pullman & Comley Attorneys Thank you to everyone who attending SGA’s National Brownfields Coalition’s webinar What the BUILD Act Could Build on Wednesday, May 8th, 2013. On the webinar, we discussed the legislation introduced in March by Senators Lautenberg (D-NJ), Inhofe (R-OK), Crapo (R-ID), and Udall (D-NM), changes to … Continued

Uncategorized

A new resource for engaging community members in brownfield redevelopment

By ·

OPTIONs Workbook coverDo you know the ten smart growth principles by heart? Me neither, but there’s one I never forget: Encourage Community and Stakeholder Collaboration in Development Decisions.

Engaging community members in decisions about where, what, when and how to invest, build, and preserve is what makes smart growth smart. As basic as this principle is, though, it is not always easy to do. There is a learning curve for everyone involved in the development process and this is particularly true for brownfield sites—properties that are or are suspected to be contaminated by hazardous materials. Brownfields are some of the most complicated redevelopment projects and the more people and official processes that are involved in the process, the steeper the learning curve.

That’s why Smart Growth America is happy to release a new tool designed to help communities organize for effective public outreach. The Organizing to Promote Targeted Improvements in Our Neighborhoods (OPTIONs) Community Engagement Workbook is a series of seven worksheets with instructions designed to help community groups think about how to organize, what they need, and how to build a strategy to participate in the redevelopment process. Community groups can use these tools on their own, but they can be just as useful for local governments seeking working with partners in federally- and state-mandated community engagement programs.

Uncategorized

How much could your town save?

By ·

The Gulch

Local leaders across the country have already built their way to better budgets.

Dozens of municipalities have compared development scenarios and the impact they would have on public finances. Nearly as many places have found that they could save money—and increase revenue—by using smarter development strategies.

How much can other communities expect to save with these strategies? And how much revenue, on average, does smart growth development generate compared to the alternatives?

Next week Smart Growth America will release new research that answers these questions. The new report collects local studies from across the country and will unveil new analysis on how smart growth strategies would impact an average municipality’s budget.

Uncategorized

Healthfields: Creating healthy communities and improving neighborhoods at the same time

By ·

Willa Cather Center
The Willa Carson Health and Wellness Center in Clearwater, FL used to be a vacant gas station.

As cities and towns seek to improve conditions for economic development, a burgeoning trend is beginning to take hold in communities around the country. Forgoing the traditional methods of pursuing private investment, some communities are instead taking a ‘health-based’ approach – identifying basic community needs like access to health care, fresh food, and safe places to gather and play and prioritizing those investments to sustain a healthy neighborhood. When these priorities are incorporated into brownfield redevelopment, the result is known as a “Healthfield,” and the concept is gaining traction with planners, health professionals and environmental advocates around the country.

Uncategorized
  • …
  • …