The New York City Brownfield Partnership, a non-profit public-private partnership promoting the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfield sites in New York City, has just released an update of its groundbreaking 2014 study analyzing the impact of the New York State Brownfield Cleanup Program (BCP) on the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfield sites in New York State. Both the 2014 study and the update were authored by Barry F. Hersh, Clinical Associate Professor at New York University’s Schack Institute of Real Estate, with financial support from the Partnership.

The update, which analyzes newly-available data from tax years 2013 and 2014, confirms the conclusion of the 2014 study: that the most seriously-criticized aspects of the BCP were, to a significant degree, addressed by changes made to the program in 2008 by the state legislature.

The key conclusions of the 2015 update include the following:

– Sites admitted into the BCP since 2008 tend to be smaller, more geographically diverse, more likely to be located in low income areas, and more likely to have industrial or affordable housing end uses than sites admitted in the 2003-2008 period.

– The post-2008 projects are, at least to date, substantially less expensive to the state treasury than those admitted in the 2003-2008 period. The average tax credit cost for those sites to date is approximately $6 million, compared to $13 million for pre-2008 projects.

– A much greater percentage (36%) of credits of tax credits for post-2008 projects have been earned as a result of site cleanup expenses rather than development costs (64%). The comparable percentages for pre-2008 projects are 6% (cleanup expenses) and 94% (development expenses).

For further information about the updated study, please contact Deborah Shapiro, President of the New York City Brownfield Partnership, at (646) 388-9544, or David J. Freeman, Chair of the Partnership’s Legislative/Policy Committee, at (212) 613-2079.

Click here to view the full study.