Missoula Granted More Brownfield Revitalization Funds

By Matthew Frank, 6-16-08

	Caption: A building on the former Champion Sawmill site

Missoula has been awarded a $400,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to replenish its Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund, a fund established in 2004 through the EPA to help clean up and revitalize contaminated properties in Missoula.

The city will be receiving the money in the next couple of months, says Missoula Brownfields Coordinator Kisha Schlegel, and an open application process will likely begin toward the end of the year.

The bulk of Missoula’s original $1.2 million Revolving Loan Fund was awarded to the Millsite Redevelopment Project, the development team working to transform the blighted Champion Sawmill site in the center of town into the mixed-use Old Sawmill District.

That project has had “quite a bit of good momentum in the last month and a half or so,” says Chris Cerquone of Geomatrix, the city’s environmental consultant. Four of the six actions required to clean up the soil have been approved by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality. As for the other two, “We’ve done the work, just the paperwork is catching up with the work.” Cerquone hopes that aspect of the clean up will be wrapped up by the end of July.

Ground water contamination and wood waste are still being addressed. Progress will depend on many factors, Cerquone says, including how quickly the city moves to clean up an adjacent 15 acres that will eventually be a riverfront park. “The market is a big factor, too.” he says.

Click here for much more on the potentials—and complexities—of brownfield redevelopment in the West.