Comment Of The Day: Pulled Out Of The Brownfield Program

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Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Toll Brothers' Toxic Towers On The Gowanus: Is It A Deal Or No Deal?":

Toll once wanted the NY tax payers to help cleanup their site (paying 25% of those costs) but they pulled out of the NY State Brownfield program in order to take down the building on the site designated eligible for the National Historic Registry. Under the brownfield program the demolition could not take place without approval under the program.

The DEC brownfield program is a volunteer program. Toll pulled out of the program to take out the building. They could develop the site without any DEC brownfield oversight--no cleanup standards would be held over their head at all except what the City required under the rezoning--and who knows what kind of standards that may have been! The DEC permits needed to develop have to do with the bulkheads and wetlands, not the brownfield conditions.

But the good news is that Toll just doesn't want to (or financially can't) build along the Gowanus now. And it hard to feel sorry that the selling party lost out on a deal--they are the same people who displaced active businesses from the site.

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