The Business Development Corporation of the Northern Panhandle wants to use a newly funded regional grant program to help redevelop the old Brooke Glass property in Wellsburg as well as other industrial sites in the area.
The BDC has taken title to the former factory, a property community residents want to see cleaned up and reused in a neighborhood-friendly way. Idled more than three decades ago, neighbors think its proximity to a rail-trail makes the property attractive for things like boat storage and retail activities in keeping with the neighborhood.
BDC is partnering with the Northern West Virginia Brownfields Assistance Center, which has developed a new regional Site-Ready Program to address brownfields sites using nearly $380,000 in funding from the Benedum Foundation over a three-year period.
The program, which emphasizes inter-state cooperation and collaboration, targets properties based on forecasted demand. Rather than wait until a prospect voices interest in a property and risk losing that opportunity because of the work to be done to prepare it for reuse, the Site-Read Program identifies and prepares specific, high-value properties.
The Benedum funding will be used for primarily for site-related costs, which include surveys, market planning, market assessments and identification, and to complete environmental assessments for high-interest properties.There’s also a community development component, which includes costs associated with identifying additional stakeholders and gathering community input on re-use options, as well as a regional networking/marketing initiative.
As part of the program, the BDC will collaborate with its Pennsylvania counterparts, North Side Industrial Development Group and the Riverside Center for Innovation, on marketing, creative financing and grant writing as well as site-development activities in their four-county service area – Brooke and Hancock counties in West Virginia, Allegheny and Beaver counties in Pennsylvania.
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