Cleaning up its tract

When Chris Claybaker first came to Camden, Ark., in 1976 as a reporter for the Camden News, he quickly became familiar with the 80-acre area fronting the Ouachita River plagued by drug dealing, prostitution and violent crime. He returned in 1992 as a business owner to find that the situation had not improved. Today, as mayor, Claybaker is helping turn the stretch of land that was filled with dilapidated and asbestos-ridden buildings into the home of a new business incubator that is generating employment and pride for residents.

The four-block tract currently being redeveloped once was a popular area of the 13,125-resident town dotted with hotels, honky tonks and businesses. A railroad, however, began carrying the prosperity to other parts of Camden. “People were talking in the mid-’60s about what to do with the area,” Claybaker says.

The main problem site was an abandoned lot that housed a gas station in the 1950s and 1960s but recently had become a place where the town’s unemployed would congregate to find day labor.

“I was determined to fix the problem,” says Claybaker, who spearheaded the project with help from Kathy Lee, now the assistant mayor. “The area is one of the main entries into town and had been ignored for too long.”

With a limited tax base from which to draw, Lee suggested developing a proposal that would balance Camden’s needs with the potential for outside funding. Possible contamination on the site from asbestos and underground storage tanks led Claybaker and Lee to apply for brownfield funding. Unaware of any other rural communities that had renovated a brownfield, they proceeded without a model.

In 2000, Camden received a $200,000 brownfield assessment demonstration pilot program grant from the Environmental Protection Agency. Claybaker and Lee eventually secured $1.5 million from the federal Economic Development Administration and decided to create the Adams Avenue Redevelopment, a light industrial and business area with access to the adjacent port and railroad.

The mayor approached the struggling businesses in the redevelopment area and offered to clean up the properties using city labor before purchasing the sites. (The sites had to be remediated first because local governments in Arkansas cannot spend federal money to acquire potential brownfields.)

The gas station lot was one of the first sites to be acquired and rebuilt for $800,000 by the city. The lot is now the location for the Ouachita Valley Business Technology Development Center, a 15,000-square-foot office and light manufacturing building that serves as the centerpiece of the redevelopment. To attract tenants, the city offers businesses a reduced rental rate for their first two years, and the city and state then give cash incentives to construct buildings on the property. Claybaker intends for the 80-acre space to be filled with office and manufacturing buildings, truck docks and a warehouse with access to the railroad within five years.

Currently, about one-third of the manufacturing space is occupied by an injection molding company, and a consulting company has moved into the office space. Camden is purchasing the last piece of property. Claybaker aims to complete cleanup by summer 2006.

In addition to transforming the area, Claybaker hopes to prove that brownfield redevelopments are viable in small rural communities. “We have just as much of a brownfield problem as bigger cities,” he says. “It’s important for us to find a way to rebuild, too.”