Federal Funding Case Studies > Emeryville, California

Emeryville, California

Issue Overview
Once a manufacturing town, Emeryville, California suffered severe blight as much of its local industry abandoned the area in the 1970’s.  By 1996, this predominantly low-income community on the San Francisco Bay was blighted by 234 acres of vacant or underutilized property and 213 acres with suspected soil or groundwater contamination.  Over 20 percent of the City’s non-residential property was vacant and over 40 percent was underutilized.

The extent of the contamination and sheer number of brownfields imposed significant transaction, cleanup, time, and regulatory costs on any new development.  As a result, risk-averse investors were reluctant to invest in the area. It is estimated that the lack of investment cost Emeryville $13.3 million in tax revenues and 450 jobs between 1991 and 1996.

Strategy & Result
Emeryville needed financial assistance in order to assess all of the vacant and contaminated areas and plan for the cleanup of several sites located in the most disadvantaged census tracts. The city hoped to redevelop these sites into open space, a community center, and an intermodal transit center.

The City of Emeryville turned to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for assistance. Emeryville submitted an application for the EPA Brownfield Assessment grant program in which funding is provided for brownfield inventories, planning, environmental assessments, and community outreach. Emeryville was fortunate to be selected and used a $200,000 EPA grant to turn their brownfields situation around. In order to address the contamination concerns of potential developers, the City developed a comprehensive, area-wide approach to environmental cleanup, rather than a site specific approach.  This allowed the city to use their EPA brownfields grant money to collect environmental data on whole areas of the city that were marred by brownfields, and then target cleanup and revitalization efforts accordingly. 

To date, the City of Emeryville has received over $1 million in EPA Brownfield Assessment and Cleanup grant funding. This funding has gone a long way towards identifying areas that need to be remediated, cleaning up contaminated property, and thus providing opportunities for redevelopment.