GIS helps detail brownfields to spur revitalization

The Louisville (Ky.) Empowerment Zone is made up of approximately 5,400 acres in the center of the city that houses one of the community’s most distressed inner-city neighbor hoods. At least one-quarter of the area, including large tracts of land and obsolete structures once used for industrial and commercial purposes, stands vacant or is severely underused.

Many of these sites now are abandoned–contaminated from the storage and use of toxic chemicals.

Additionally, the investment required for cleanup exceeds the market value of the land.

Brownfields cost the city $8.7 million annually in lost property tax revenues. But, the existing environmental regulatory structure has inadvertently created disincentives for redevelopment of these properties, styming market forces that might propel the reuse of older industrial sites, creating a time-consuming and cumbersome redevelopment process and promoting the perception of insurmountable institutional barriers to reuse. To address these problems the city is using the computer mapping and data analysis resources of the Louisville and Jefferson County Information Consortium (LOJIC), a multiparticipant group that has built one of the most comprehensive metropolitan geographic databases in the country.

Two significant public participation/community planning activities form the backdrop to these current economic revitalization efforts. The first involved community and business leaders in developing a regional economic development strategy for the greater Louisville metropolitan area. Begun in 1991, it charged the community with planning for the revitalization of older industrial districts located in areas of historically high unemployment and disinvestment within the city.

The project’s budget was about $15,000, with a scheduled completion date of August 1995.

The second, Louisville’s Empowerment Zone strategic planning process, began in 1993, and achieved an unprecedented level of community participation. The Empowerment Zone strategy identified the recycling of older industrial and commercial sites as critical to economic redevelopment of the inner city.

Two financial mechanisms were established that helped target resources at revitalization in these neighborhoods.

First, the Land Bank Authority brings all of the taxing entities together into a consortium to acquire vacant and abandoned property, remove tax liabilities and act as intermediaries with state and financial institutions.

Second, the Community Development Bank finances opportunities for business development and job training within the area. To date, $7.8 million has been committed to the development of this entity.

Among the working group’s activities, the creation of the brownfields inventory in the LOJIC GIS has been key to targeting sites for possible redevelopment. The inventory contains detailed information on each of the more than 20,000 parcels in the Empowerment Zone such as ownership, property characteristics, zoning, land use, permits, environmental history, tax block/lot identification, tax delinquent, land use code and zoning code. The work has become a national proving ground for accomplishing the complex task of brownfields recycling and urban redevelopment.

The backing of state and federal agencies, and the strong partnership among local govemments and neighborhood organizations, have made this initiative a success.