Brownfield Development Authority explained
Grand River Riverfront Park (Stock Photo) - Justin Scott
By Justin Tiemeyer - Contributing Writer
11 Jan. 2025
On Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024, the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority met at City Hall for the first time in six years. Mike Burns is Lowell’s city manager. “We’ll be meeting a lot more now,” Burns said in response to Brownfield chair Jim Reagan’s jokes about infrequent meetings.
The Brownfield Redevelopment Authority was created according to Michigan Act 381 of 1996 for the expressed purpose of assisting municipalities with developing underutilized land, including land with pollution or pollution risk.
There have been a handful of pollution concerns over the past few years in the City of Lowell and its environs. In December of 2023, news broke that the city’s former landfill on Ware Road, in Boston Township, was named a PFAS contamination site. By June of 2024, another PFAS site was announced on O E Bieri Industrial Drive in Vergennes Township. Additionally, TCE (trichloroethylene) contamination at Root-Lowell on Foreman Street has been reported since at least 1989.
What some folks struggled to understand, following the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority meeting, was why the city would assemble another board for such a small number of properties, most of which are not even within Lowell city limits.
To begin with, the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority, as it currently stands, is a new board in name only. Its membership is identical with the roster of the Downtown Development Authority, and its meetings are effectively special meetings of the DDA, in much the same way that the city council sometimes assembles prior to regular meetings but wearing their hats as the Zoning Board of Appeals.
Secondly, Brownfield Redevelopments offer financial incentives for developers to establish businesses and housing in Lowell. Burns was not able to name names, but he explained that three separate groups had reached out to him, in order to take advantage of Brownfield credits. Though the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority had not yet established a policy at the time of its Nov. 14 meeting, the board had already heard its first request from Flat River Outreach Ministries Executive Director, Wendie Preiss.
Finally, the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority has a much broader mandate than most folks might imagine. “The entire city is a Brownfield,” Burns said.
“Every jurisdiction handles their Brownfields differently,” Burns explained. “When the city created our Brownfield Authority, we just decided to make the whole city a Brownfield.”
The primary benefit of such a broad designation is flexibility. If the city limited Brownfields to only those places with a confirmed contamination history, when the board was formed in 2018, the Authority would have to reconvene every time another contamination took place, whether or not there was any immediate benefit to the city of doing so. Making the whole city a Brownfield covered all of the “what if” scenarios.
Moreover, the city could choose to use Brownfield Redevelopment financial incentives to push forward projects that have nothing to do with contamination sites. A basic understanding of municipal economics makes it clear just how much of a benefit the broader Brownfield designation could be. If a business has a choice between two cities for its new location, they are likely to choose the location with the most financial incentives. “If you don’t provide them,” Burns said, “the city next to you will, and they will benefit and you won’t.”
Kent County has taken a similar route as the City of Lowell and determined that the entire county is a Brownfield. Not only does this underscore the efficacy of the city’s decision, but it means that any project in Lowell can choose to process its Brownfield application through either the county or the city.
Establishing the entire City of Lowell as a Brownfield seems like it is all upside, but Burns wanted to make it clear that businesses can abuse a process like this. For example, some members of the community felt that CopperRock Construction steamrolled the city in its attempt to remodel the old RollAway building with, what representative, Greg Taylor, described at a Sept. 4, 2023 city council meeting as “a friendly lawsuit,” and a carelessly worded policy could open the doors for worse.
Burns explained that the Brownfield Redevelopment authority’s policy, once established, would have to give the city the power to stop an unpopular development that does not offer additional amenities to the residents of the city, but the details on that policy, as mentioned earlier, are “to be determined.” More on this and other developments following the Brownfield Redevelopment Authority’s first meeting of 2025.
An interactive map of Brownfield Redevelopment program contacts, courtesy of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) website.
