Brownfields Success Stories

Sacramento's Old Railways Steam Towards a New, Promising Future

Sacramento's Brownfields Pilot focuses on the cleanup and redevelopment of two of the City's old railway properties. The City had been working toward revitalizing the Southern Pacific property for five years when EPA provided a $200,000 grant under the Agency's Brownfields Pilot Initiative. Following the EPA grant, procedures were established from an existing agreement among the City, Southern Pacific (the previous owner of the site) and the State, whereby the State would oversee initial cleanup, and the City would oversee any cleanup required during redevelopment of the distressed property. This multi-year, multi-phase project will produce 10 million square feet of office space, 2,700 new units of mid- to high-rise apartments, and 28 acres of parkland. The project includes a new Federal courthouse, which is scheduled for completion in the fall of 1998. Several contamination issues arose during courthouse construction, which the City resolved using the "Pilot Environmental Oversight Program" manual developed with Pilot funds. A community center, a school, and an intermodal facility for light rail, Amtrak, and buses are also planned. At the project's completion, 40,000 permanent jobs are expected to have been created, along with 15,000 construction jobs and additional environmental cleanup positions. This effort inspired Union Pacific to plan for redevelopment of another of its properties in cooperation with the State, the City, and EPA. Union Pacific's 66-acre site will eventually be transformed from an abandoned railway into retail, residential, and multi-use properties with the potential to create hundreds of new jobs. Sacramento received a $350,000 EPA Brownfields Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund (BCRLF) grant in 1997, which will be used for environmental cleanup on sites targeted under the Brownfields Pilot. A revolving loan fund charges low interest, and uses loan repayments to make new loans for the same purposes. Discussions are underway with the Capitol Area Development Agency to use BCRLF dollars to assess and clean up potential contamination on another of Sacramento's old, abandoned properties, for eventual conversion into market-rate housing. For more information on the Sacramento Brownfields Pilot, contact Thomas Mix at (415) 744-2378.