New Brownfield Program Focuses on Project Readiness

The Ohio Department of Development is in the thick of reviewing applications for the next round of Ohio’s Brownfield Remediation Program—one of the most impactful redevelopment tools available to commercial real estate developers and owners across the state. $88 million will soon be awarded to support the cleanup of industrial, commercial, and institutional properties that had been burdened by environmental contamination.

This funding round was made possible through the most recent biennial budget (House Bill 96), which allocated $200 million to the Program. At the start of the session, Governor DeWine originally recommended no additional funding for the Brownfield Remediation Program. 

It then became apparent to us that if the Brownfield Program was going to have a future, it would only be with less funds and revamped standards. We worked closely with policymakers throughout the legislative session to draft language and to advocate for adoption of that language to ensure that the Brownfield Program not only had a future in Ohio but that it was also better for the commercial real estate industry by focusing on real projects rather than cleaning up sites that have no chance of being developed in our lifetimes. We then fiercely advocated to support the policy to focus grants on economic development projects that generate even greater economic return.

The only language of ours that was changed came when the Senate reserved $1 million for each of Ohio’s 88 counties in the pending application round, ensuring that smaller and rural communities had access to funding alongside major metro markets.

The Department of Development recently issued new, detailed Program Guidelines incorporating many of our suggestions addressing eligibility, scoring criteria, and documentation requirements. Now, projects demonstrating strong redevelopment potential, economic impact, and readiness to proceed are best positioned for awards.

Brownfield applications for this pending round were accepted from November 12 through December 5 and will be the first ever to be evaluated through the new merit-based scoring process.

With $88 million deployed in this round and guaranteed geographic allocation across all counties, there’s a greater chance that more projects will receive awards in the pending round. Still, the shift to the new statewide merit-based system will favor real projects, and the more prepared, the better. With less funding available in a tightened fiscal cycle, the focus on economic development should enable more awards to support a wide range of true economic development projects, but we will soon see.

The next Brownfield Remediation Program round will be open March or April. We are now working with several developers on their Brownfield applications for the upcoming round, and we have capacity to take on a few more applications. If you have questions about the overhauled Statute or the new Program Guidelines or would like to set up your application for success in the upcoming round, no firm in Ohio is as familiar with the new standards under this improved Brownfield Program as we are because we drafted most of the statutory language and advocated for its passage.

Read more about the new Brownfield Remediation Program Guidelines here.