Our approach
Contaminated properties, “brownfields,” once considered a serious potential liability, can be a lucrative investment opportunity.
With the right strategic partner, you can understand and manage the potential liabilities to move your business forward effectively. Having a foot in both real estate and environmental industries, Nixon Peabody’s Brownfield Transactional team is fully equipped to help private developers and public entity clients achieve their development goals while avoiding the potential pitfalls.
We have successfully completed redevelopment projects on land previously considered too polluted for profitable use—and have helped to secure some of the first brownfields tax credits ever awarded.
In CERCLA/site remediation, we have been the lead project firm for over 100 client-owned, multi-party state or federal hazardous waste, brownfields, voluntary cleanup or Superfund sites in several dozen states across the United States and in several countries.
We work with clients on all aspects of the transaction—from pre-acquisition due diligence and land use planning to environmental quality review, remediation and wetland disturbance.
We work with
- Developers
- Public entities
- Technology companies
- Manufacturers
- Universities
- Utilities
- Financial institutions
Recent experience
- Represented a major publishing company in the purchase and remediation of a contaminated property, which had been under environmental investigation for over ten years, under the new New York State Brownfield Cleanup Program. We structured a deal under which the developer purchased the site and transferred ownership to the client without any risk of environmental liabilities after the developer remediated the site. Both parties entered into a Brownfield Cleanup Agreement in order for the client to benefit from various tax credits available under the Brownfield Cleanup Program.
- Secured approval for MassDevelopment brownfield funding for a large mixed-use commercial redevelopment project in Boston. The approval includes partial up-front state funding for a variety of brownfield site assessment activities. Factors that are judged in determining a project’s eligibility include community benefits, such as job creation and job training, project feasibility and the proposed remediation approach.
- Representing a large client in a complex brownfield clean-up of a site in Buffalo, New York and sale to the developer.
- Represented a National Basketball Association franchise in coordinating an innovative voluntary cleanup initiative with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. This cleanup is crucial to the franchise’s time-sensitive efforts to redevelop historically contaminated property into a high-visibility sports arena complex that will also include office, retail and residential properties.
- Assisted clients in connection with military base closure and related brownfield redevelopment issues. We have helped clients analyze the viability of potential ownership structures and construction approaches for redevelopments that are consistent with the overall base closure remediation and redevelopment plan. We have supported them in their preparation of request for proposals, negotiations and implementation.
- Represented a client in the achieved remediation of a mercury-contaminated site and currently working on achieving a redevelopment opportunity.
- Represent a client in handling several environmental remediations and currently defending the client as to claims for cost recovery relating to the brownfields cleanup program for a former optic manufacturing site (1900s era).
- Represented a client in connection with its reuse and rehabilitation of an old mill complex that will ultimately be used as an incubator facility for startup manufacturing and technology companies. In addition to assisting the client in utilizing an innovative construction method, we analyzed statutory compliance issues, helped the client prepare its request for proposal, developed proposal review procedures and drafted the construction contract.
- Represented a local affordable housing organization exploring the potential redevelopment of coastal and other brownfield sites.
- Represented a Government of Puerto Rico entity, the owner of the large majority of industrial property on the island, in obtaining an EPA grant for the development of a Brownfield program and in assisting the client to implement the program.
