Community Progress Announces Recipients of Technical Assistance Award to Advance Brownfield Revitalization

Build Baton Rouge; the Maine Redevelopment Land Bank Authority; and the City of Raton, New Mexico selected for national technical assistance award. 

FLINT, MICHIGAN – The Center for Community Progress (Community Progress) announced today the recipients of its technical assistance scholarship focused on strengthening land bank approaches to brownfield revitalization. The selected awardees are Build Baton Rouge, the Maine Redevelopment Land Bank Authority, and the City of Raton, New Mexico. 

This competitive award—a scholarship providing no-cost technical assistance to eligible entities—was designed to support communities seeking to create new state-enabling land bank legislation, establish land banks under existing state law, or improve existing land bank approaches to brownfield work. 

Brownfield properties, often referred to as “brownfields,” are properties where the presence or potential presence of hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant makes redevelopment challenging and costly. Land banks are a promising tool for addressing brownfields due to their role as public entities with unique powers to return problem properties back to productive use in accordance with community goals. 

“We are excited to offer these state and local authorities the support they need to reuse long-vacant properties and improve the health of their communities,” said Tarik Abdelazim, Vice President of Technical Assistance at Community Progress. 

About the Awardees 

Build Baton Rouge (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) is a land bank andeconomic development authority seeking to refine its approach to brownfield revitalization. Through this project, Community Progress will support Build Baton Rouge staff to understand the scale and scope of brownfield properties in East Baton Rouge Parish and establish prioritization criteria to guide the acquisition and revitalization of these properties. 

Maine Redevelopment Land Bank Authority (State of Maine) will use this opportunity to assess how land bank capacity can support brownfield planning and community engagement, particularly in rural communities. A newer, nimble agency with a statewide mission, the land bank will focus on program design, site prioritization, building capacity, and creating a statewide framework for brownfields cleanup. 

City of Raton (Raton, New Mexico) will focus on advancing state-enabling land bank legislation and related reforms to foreclosure systems. The ability to create a land bank could help the city, and other communities throughout New Mexico, address persistent vacant property challenges. In Raton, these challenges include the number of brownfields in the region related to the city’s coal mining legacy and subsequent population decline. 

This project is made possible through a grant from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to support EPA brownfields grant recipients. Learn more about land banks and brownfield revitalization at: https://communityprogress.org/resources/brownfields/  

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About Community Progress: The Center for Community Progress helps people to transform vacant spaces into vibrant places. Since 2010, their team of experts has provided urban, suburban, and rural communities looking to revitalize vacant properties with the tools and resources needed to address those properties at the policy and systems level. As the only national nonprofit dedicated to vacant property revitalization, Community Progress drives change by uncovering and disrupting systems that perpetuate entrenched vacancy and property deterioration. Community Progress has delivered customized, expert guidance to leaders in over 300 communities and provided hundreds of hours of free educational resources as well as leadership programming to help policymakers, practitioners, and community members across the country return properties to productive use. To learn more and get help for your community, visit communityprogress.org.