ePropertyPlus subscribers working at the forefront of community revitalization encounter suspected brownfields, alongside or in the same neighborhoods as residential property. Brownfields are industrial and commercial properties with known or suspected soil contamination problems. Some common examples include gas stations and dry cleaners, small manufacturing sites, or machine shops. Brownfields offer unique opportunities, but also present unique challenges.
Returning these properties to productive use can contribute to economic growth, but also improve the environment for members of the community. Because of the unique environmental and financial challenges of dealing with these sites, Delta Institute, a non-profit supporting community redevelopment in the Midwest, has created a neat scoring tool to help prioritize the best brownfield sites for redevelopment. The tool can help practitioners make decisions about which brownfields to tackle and for those that may need more time, investigation, or future engagement, a framework for explaining those decisions.
The same kind of modeling can be used on residential property. Our clients incorporate property and market conditions, market pricing, rehab or reuse potential, financing and other resources, and/or alignment to mission to make decisions and track those data points in ePropertyPlus.
This is one in an occasional series of posts on ideas for applying data and technology to solve tough property challenges.
(photo sourced courtesy Wisconsin Center on Investigative Journalism).