Brownfields Success Stories

Charlotte Maintains Redevelopment Momentum

Awarded in 1996, the City of Charlotte's National Brownfields Assessment Pilot targets brownfields in the city's Wilmore neighborhood and South End business district. The Pilot's latest success is the Gaines Brown Design Project, which focuses on a property located in Charlotte's Wilmore neighborhood. $25,000 in Pilot funding was used to conduct a Phase II environmental assessment and design a cleanup plan for the former radiator shop. A restaurant or upscale food store is now being considered for the site; twelve jobs are expected to be retained and six to eight additional jobs created. Previous successes for the Charlotte Brownfields Pilot include the Thomas Construction Company property, which also housed a radiator shop that left the soil contaminated with lead. The Pilot performed assessments and created a plan for site cleanup that allowed Thomas Construction to remove contaminated soil and renovate an existing building for its own use. This brownfield was restored to productive use with a mere $7,500 in assessment funding from the EPA Pilot; the project expects to retain fourteen jobs while creating nine new positions. To date, the Charlotte Pilot has leveraged $203,938 in cleanup and $60,438 in assessment funding from public and private sources, as well as nearly $14 million in redevelopment funding--a total expected to reach $15 million. For more information on the Charlotte Pilot, contact Tom Warshauer at (704) 336-4522.