State funding could boost plan for Broome brownfields

700 acres, two dozen sites would be redeveloped

It's a sign that something is being done.

Broome County is creating a plan to take 700 acres and two dozen industrial sites in Greater Binghamton's ugliest industrial neighborhoods and find a way to redevelop them.

The so-called Brownfield Opportunities Areas would be eligible for state funding to pay for the cost of assessing each site for contamination and other roadblocks to redevelopment, and to plan a way to clean them up for development. The result, officials and developers hope, would be a much-needed revival of the area's most visible ugly spots while creating raw material to draw one of America's fastest-growing industries -- brownfield redevelopment.

"There's a great shortage of greenfields," Lane says between innings. He owns William H. Lane Inc., a large-scale contractor, so he has a pretty good idea where there are projects that can employ him.

The one behind him -- site preparation for a new $48 million printing plant for the Binghamton Press Co. on the site of an old Endicott-Johnson plant -- would by itself keep construction people employed for 16 to 18 months.

Funding sources

Decades of heavy industry have left their scars on Greater Binghamton. Broome County has more than 80 major brownfields and uncounted hundreds of smaller ones. Many of them are old Endicott-Johnson facilities, but a couple of foundries, a bunch of warehouses and other buildings rot in what would otherwise be prime real estate.

They might be contaminated with metals or chemicals, but nobody knows. They may be perfectly clean. That's what the Brownfield Opportunities Area would address, said Julie Sweet, Broome County's planning commissioner.

The state would pay for 90 percent of the cost to study the sites and develop cleanup plans, if necessary. Broome County's 10 percent share could come from in-kind services, said Chief Planner Frank Evangelisti, or the county could tap a $200,000 federal grant it received last year.

After that, sites in the areas move to the head of the line for state funding from a 1996 bond act voters approved for environmental projects. About $175 million of the $200 million in borrowing remains unspent because state requirements were so restrictive.

The state eased the guidelines last year to encourage communities to clean themselves up.

"These are areas in distress," Evangelisti said, "but there's real opportunity here."

Both areas -- 250 acres in Johnson City and 450 in Binghamton -- have access to the interstates. The Johnson City site is just a couple hundred yards from Route 17's Exit 71. The Binghamton area stretches along the Brandywine Highway, just off Interstate 81's Exit 4.

They're both also among the most visible industrial neighborhoods in the area -- the part of Greater Binghamton that led the New York Times to call Binghamton a "burned-out industrial shell."

Cleaning up neighborhoods

The Stalkers like the idea of cleaning up their neighborhood along Montgomery Street. Their neighbors are an unused warehouse, two distribution facilities, a shut-down aluminum foundry, an old equipment-manufacturing plant, a shuttered furniture company and a strip club.

"I don't know what would come here, though," Robert Stalker said. "Probably nothing."

That's fine with Minnie Stalker.

"I'd rather not see anybody take it," she said. "I'd like to see it torn down."

That's still an improvement, said Kenneth Kamlet, an attorney for Newman Development Group who is active in the New York chapter of the National Brownfields Association. Brownfields depress property values for up to six miles around, he said, citing a federally funded study.

There are no specific plans about what to do with the properties.

"Those properties may not be returned to the same use," said Patrick J. Doyle, director of the Greater Binghamton Coalition, a public-private partnership dedicated to reviving the community's economy.

Heavy manufacturing is a declining sector, but the properties could just as easily house office space, research space, commercial space -- just about anything.

Some of that is already coming to the Johnson City stretch, which extends from Glenwood Avenue in Binghamton to south of Wilson Memorial Regional Medical Center, Doyle said. The Press project is one example, but so is Olum's distribution center, which opened in 2003, and a warehouse at Country Valley Industries, which opened a few weeks ago.

"JC," Doyle said, "is already seeing a nice little resurgence."

In the core

Brownfield projects are among the fastest growing segment in development, according to the 2002 Economic Census. Part of that is because initial development took the best space, near highways and with utilities already in place.

"There's plenty of greenfield around here, but the brown is better because it's close to the core," said Marc Newman of Newman Development Group.

Newman plays a number of roles in the brownfields issue. Almost all of his local projects have been brownfields, from the Town Square Mall and Parkway Plaza in Vestal, to Lowe's on Upper Front Street in Chenango, and the current Press project. And he's a member of the Greater Binghamton Coalition who advocated strongly for the creation of the zones, although he and county officials said he had no part in determining the boundaries.

Besides, Newman added, there are plenty of brownfields to go around.

"The best developer wins," he said. "Bring 'em on. We're not going to get into a bidding war."

Newman knows the process, and he knows that while the questions that surround a brownfield are a major hurdle, they're not the only hurdle. It might be that contamination needs to cleaned up, or gas lines moved. He's even had to deal with a property that had tunnels.

Making sure the property owner has a good vision for the site, and the patience to wait while the developer creates a plan that handles the complications are big ones.

"If you have an owner who wants to sell today, it won't work," he said. "We're going to want time to work the property. The owner has to have as much vision as the developer."

A needed jump-start

A couple hundred yards from Newman's latest local project -- and Lane's senior league softball game -- Ted Felton Jr. and Linda Felton-Shelton discuss the nature of foot traffic at their Main Street restaurant. In a term, it would be "not much." Takeout orders make up the bulk of their business at Theo's Barbecue, and that means they could almost put the restaurant their parents founded anywhere.

"I'm a former Anitec worker -- 15 years," in Binghamton's First Ward, Felton said. "Every Thursday, I'd have 25 or 30 co-workers who'd cash their check and give me their order."

With some new development nearby, those days might come again. But at the moment, they feel like they're living amid an industrial graveyard -- 1/4 and they know it turns people away.

"It's a comfort level," Felton-Shelton said. "You come to a place not for the food, but the environment."

And the environment in their neighborhood could be improved.

Government officials from Johnson City, Binghamton, Union and Broome County picked the two would-be Brownfield Opportunities Areas for a variety of factors: poverty rates, building vacancy rates, property values, the concentration of brownfields and the potential of the areas to take off once tidied up.

"All we really need," Doyle said, "are a couple of projects to jump-start things."

That's what the Feltons hope for.

"A lot of the neighborhoods are just desolate," said Felton-Shelton, who travels routinely from her home in Dallas to help the family business. "I would love to pick all my family up and take them to Dallas.

"New York State has to do something."