From post-industrial landscape to entertainment jewel in Buffalo, USA

Here are three important lessons-learned from the Buffalo Color Park project:

Upside-down brownfield projects are the future

World-renowned brownfield projects such as London’s Canary Wharf and New York’s Hudson Yards can be economically viable on their own because they are in areas where property values are extremely high. But many of these high-value, former industrial sites have already been remediated and redeveloped.

This means that without incentives, many remaining brownfields sites, like the one in Buffalo, would not likely attract private developers because the cost of cleanup would exceed the commercial value of the property. These redevelopment projects are characterized as “upside down”. To stimulate redevelopment and foster job creation, the public sector often provides financial assistance, tax incentives and other forms of support. This support can be provided at the federal, state, or local levels or a combination of all three. Economic Development Agencies and other such entities are often involved.

Remediation of the Site that became Buffalo Color Park was facilitated by the New York State BCP. Like many state programs, the BCP provides a clear and predictable pathway to site cleanup and redevelopment. What is unique about the New York State Program, and one of the keys to its success, is that it offers tax credits for both the site cleanup and the redevelopment of brownfield sites. These tax credits were instrumental in the cleanup and redevelopment of this Site and many similar sites across New York State.

Cleanup of the Site also had another major benefit. Before the adjacent Buffalo River, which was one of the Great Lakes Areas of Concern (AOC), could be remediated, sources of contamination to the river had to be controlled. Cleanup of the Site stopped any ongoing contamination of the Buffalo River and allowed river cleanup to proceed. To execute that cleanup, the Buffalo River Restoration Partnership was formed, bringing together industrial stakeholders, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency/Great Lakes National Program Office, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper and NYSDEC.

Final cleanup of the Buffalo River was completed in 2021. In addition to decreasing concentrations of contaminants in the river, the river remediation and associated habitat restoration projects have led to a more navigable river, and greatly reduced the risk that future routine maintenance dredging activities will expose residual contaminants.

This approach, implemented at the Buffalo Color Park site, made the redevelopment financially feasible and more sustainable, while safeguarding people and the environment. Part of what made this possible from a regulatory point of view was employing methodologies to align the cleanup standards with the intended site reuse.

It’s important for all parties in a brownfield development to keep in mind that both the environmental and economic drivers of the project must be met to allow a project to proceed.