Trenton Brownfields

Facutly Mentor:  Martin Bierbaum
Student Researcher:  Jessica Godofsky

This community-based research project was comprised of two ongoing tasks designed to foster capacity-building within the City of Trenton Brownfields Program. A brownfield is a commercial or industrial site currently vacant or underutilized that is or is suspected to be contaminated. Trenton’s history as a once-lucrative ceramic and steel industrial powerhouse has left hundreds of brownfield properties to locate, remediate, and redevelop. The first project was to identify resources, both technical and financial, that would assist the Brownfields Environmental Solutions (BEST) Committee and the City in making better informed and appropriate land use decisions when planning the redevelopment of a brownfield. Data and mapping resources made publicly available by agencies in the public, private and academic sectors were researched and compiled into a user-friendly electronic report to allow interested parties to access the demographic, economic, agricultural, transit-oriented and environmental information essential to strategically establish a claim that a certain land use, such as residential, will match the social, fiscal and physical elements of a particular site.

The second project aimed to consolidate multiple brownfield site inventories into one coherent, updated and comprehensive register that would allow the City to more easily evaluate its redevelopment progress. This register will also be used to prioritize the redevelopment of sites according to their economic potential and social advantage to the City and as a marketing tool to assess investment opportunity of properties. A research paper is currently being developed to accompany this summer’s work that will include a review of academic literature and an outline of recommendations to encourage capacity-building. The paper will analyze how the previously mentioned projects, along with the establishment of a public relations program, are needed to overcome common challenges encountered when attempting to make effective, economically feasible and socially acceptable environmental planning decisions within a municipal Brownfields Program.

Personal Statement by Jessica Godofsky