The improvement of a blighted East Hartford property into the vibrant Goodwin College campus was honored for its legacy to the Northeast United States as the U.S. Conference of Mayors extolled the benefits of brownfield redevelopment.
The Connecticut Brownfields Redevelopment Authority received the Project of the Year Award from the Northeastern Economic Developers Association for its efforts in turning a former East Hartford tank farm into the 109,000 sq. ft. riverfront campus of Goodwin College, used by more than 2,500 students.
The CBRA was formed by the Connecticut General Assembly in 1999 as a self-sustaining subsidiary of the Connecticut Development Authority to redevelop the state’s contaminated industrial sites.
“We hope this collaborative success sets the example for other large remediation and redevelopment projects,” CDA President Marie O’Brien said in a statement.
More than 750 brownfield in Hartford, Naugatuck, Norwalk and Bridgeport were part of a 99-city study by the U.S. Conference of Mayors that shows the redevelopment of these sites leads to increases in jobs and local tax revenue.
The study’s findings include 161,880 new jobs created through brownfield redevelopment, $309 million in realized tax revenue from redeveloped sites, and potential tax revenue of $1.3 billion is all the surveyed sites were redeveloped.
“As a result of the mayors’ efforts, there are thousands of former brownfields sites in cities around the country that have been put to better use. And while we are proud of this accomplishment, there are hundreds of thousands of sites left that still need to be redeveloped,” said Tom Cochran, U.S. Conference of Mayors CEO and executive director, in a statement.
The average time to redevelop a brownfield site ranges from six months to 12 years. The top resources for redevelopment are private development, the U.S. EPA and state-sponsored volunteer clean-up programs.
