They may sound delicious, but the Brownie Awards are not about dessert.
Across Canada, there are many former industrial sites that have gone out of use due to shifting patterns of manufacturing and industry. Often, this will be due to the fact that these industrial sites are at the centre of cities, and the property taxes are simply too high in these areas to sustain industry.
Image: Matthew Rutledge / Flickr
But unlike other land uses, when industry leaves an area, the land often can’t be reused immediately. This is because the ground and buildings are usually filled with toxic chemicals like asbestos, heavy metals and dioxins. Before any reuse or development can happen, these areas – known as brownfields – need to be cleaned up. That can be an expensive proposition, which is why these brownfields can sit abandoned for years.
And this is why the Brownie Awards came into being. Glenn Miller, vice-president of education and research for the institute says the awards are meant to have a “stimulative effect,” to encourage developers to take on the task of remediating brownfields. There are about 30,000 brownfields in Canada, and many of them sit on valuable land.
Beyond the obvious benefit of making land that was formerly inaccessible usable, revitalizing brownfields is a win for most stakeholders. It revitalizes nearby neighbourhoods, increases tax revenues, reduces environmental contaminants and helps stall urban sprawl.
As Mr Miller says, “If you’re developing brownfields you’re not developing greenfields. The whole idea is reinvestment and reurbanization, rather than continuing to spread out.”
In 2009, the Brownies went to projects in Vancouver, Winnipeg, Saint John, Collingwood, Quebec and Owen Sound. No other award like the Brownies exists in the world, and to help deal with this oversight, the Brownies now have an award for international brownfield projects. The 2009 international award went to a project in Portland, Oregon.
Some of the work produces astonishing results. In Vancouver, the Southeast False Creek project was so successful at removing contaminants from the site and re-establishing a natural shoreline that herring have returned to the area to spawn only two years after the work was completed.
It sounds like more cities might need a few more Brownies in their diet.
Heleen Jacobsen
Broker of Record with InfoMarket Group GMAC Real Estate
www.infomarketgroup.com
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