The town of Jaffrey has been awarded $300,000 from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfield Program grants to assess sites with potential hazards, and prepare them for redevelopment. First on the list are the former St. Patrick’s School and the former W.W. Cross building.
“Brownfield” properties are sites where there is potential for expansion or redevelopment, complicated by the presence – or just potential presence of hazardous substances. Since 1995, the Brownfields Program has provided $1.76 billion in grants nationally to assess and clean up these sites to allow redevelopment to move forward.
“The Town is delighted to have been selected by EPA for a Community Wide Brownfield Assessment Grant. We will be working closely with our local Brownfields Advisory Committee, and our federal and state partners to address the redevelopment of derelict and abandoned sites so that they are no longer a burden but an asset to our neighborhoods and to the community at large,” said Jon Frederick, Town Manager of Jaffrey, during a virtual press conference where the funding was announced on Wednesday.
This year, Jaffrey was one of two towns in New Hampshire to receive funds. During Wednesday’s press conference, it was also announced that the town of Boscawen, who was receiving Brownfields funds for the first time, received a $500,000 grant to clean up the site of the former Allied Leather, a former leather tannery, on Commercial Street.
Jaffrey’s funds can be put toward “Phase 1” or “Phase 2” environmental site assessments, or to conduct community outreach and reuse planning activities for sites.
“The Towns of Boscawen and Jaffrey have long contemplated what to do with properties within their respective communities that are underutilized, unsightly, and in need of attention from an environmental perspective. The EPA Brownfields grants being awarded today will go a long way toward assessing, cleaning up, and putting these properties back into productive use which will benefit these communities both now and into the future,” said New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services Commissioner Bob Scott.
Jaffrey’s Economic Development Director JoAnne Carr said Friday the town will be putting together a committee to look at the potential uses of the funds. The funds are available for the next three years, and can be used to assess a number of sites. But priorities for the town are the former St. Patrick’s School and W.W. Cross building, Carr said.
“These are anchoring sites that bracket our downtown,” Carr said.
The W.W. Cross building is a former manufacturing plant, which has since been converted to a mixed business space, until a fire hollowed out a large part of the interior two years ago. Since, the building has stood empty and unused. Carr said the damage is bad enough that the building’s likely fate is demolition, and a Brownfield assessment could help sell the property to someone who will redevelop the site.
The St. Patrick’s School, she said, was built in the 1950s or 1960s, and likely comes with some of the environmental concerns of any building of that era – lead glazing in the windows, mercury and asbestos insulation in the walls are all a potential concern, she said.
“An assessment of the site could take that cloud off for future developers,” Carr said. “Or document what issues there are so we can take the next step.”
The St. Patrick’s School has been empty for a number of years, but there has been at least one serious attempt to purchase the school and use the site for housing.
Carr said both buildings have been points of discussion for the town during workshops involving a re-imagining of the downtown.
“We have so many needs in town,” Carr said. “We’d like to see a higher intensity of use of the W.W. Cross site, and for St. Pat’s, it could be housing or mixed-use housing and business.”
Neither building is owned by the town, but Carr said that’s not an obstacle – grant funds can be used to do the assessments anyway, with cooperation of the owners of the properties. Brownfield Program funds have in fact already been used to start the process on the W.W. Cross site, Carr said.
Carr said the town also has its eye on several other redevelopment opportunities in town that are ripe for a Brownfield assessment, and will be reaching out to the owners of those properties in the next three years to see if they’re interested in having an assessment done.
“This money could go a long way to bring Jaffrey to a place where we’re poised to move forward,” Carr said.