[CPEO-BIF] RLF unspent in Worcester (MA)

["Robert Hersh" <b_hersh@verizon.net>]

City brownfields fund unused

 

Worcester Business Journal

by Cory Hopkins

Monday, 20 August 2007

 

More than half a million is ready, but unwanted.

 

The City of Worcester has more than half a million dollars in low- and no-interest loans, but so far it hasn't loaned a single dollar in five years.

 

The money - $564,000 to be exact - is part of the city's EPA-sponsored Brownfields Cleanup Revolving Loan Fund (BCRLF). The idea of the program is to give developers an incentive to clean up brownfields sites, which are labeled as such due to significant environmental pollution. Logic says a developer would be banging down the economic development office's door for those loans to help defray costs.

But the reality is, no one's knocking.

 

The problem is, according to Heather Kamyck, the city's brownfields coordinator, that the city's loan and grant pool is not competitive with other funding options for developers in both the public and private sectors.

 

For the entire article, see:

http://wbjournal.com/j/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2247&Itemid=139

 

Bob Hersh

CPEO

 

_______________________________________________
Brownfields mailing list
Brownfields@list.cpeo.org
http://www.cpeo.org/mailman/listinfo/brownfields