York Charrette

York County
Pennsylvania

Sustainable "Green" Urban Redevelopment

Introduction

On October 14 and 15, 1997, the EFC conducted a charrette with the City of York, Pennsylvania, as the city continues to pursue redevelopment options for the Rail Corridor and other underutilized urban sites. Important to this effort is trying to manage a path of redevelopment between economic vitality and environmental sensitivity. National experts spoke to local building owners, community and business leaders, architects, engineers, and economic development practitioners about development practices that feature innovative remediation strategies, environmentally-sound construction practices and energy-efficient design.

Town Background

York has an industrial history, focusing primarily on foundries, machinery and precision manufacturing. Industry developed primarily in the Victorian era. There are still many turn-of-the-century factory-type buildings, and residential townhouses and row houses from this era still abound, lending a cultural context to the city.

York City today is 5.2 square miles with a population of 42,000. The surrounding urbanized area has a population of approximately 160,000 and continues to grow, especially as commercial and industrial customers relocate to new suburban industrial parks converted from farmland. The City has an unemployment rate of 7.3% as compared to York County at 4.7%, yet City tax rates are one to three times higher than the surrounding suburbs. Although the City has avoided a complete economic collapse, the City has lost 11,000 manufacturing jobs since 1982. At 19.8%, the City's poverty rate is approaching a critical level.

The Challenge

Last year the City of York embarked on an aggressive initiative to re-develop the City?s Rail Corridor. The corridor is approximately 400 acres, 99% of which is zoned industrial or commercial. The entire corridor is a Pennsylvania State-designated Enterprise Zone and has recently been designated as a Foreign Trade Zone. With several notable exceptions, typical buildings within the corridor are large, multiple-story structures, built at the turn of the century, that are either abandoned or under-utilized. The construction style and poor condition render these properties useless to modern industrial users. Furthermore, most of the properties have real or perceived environmental problems. Most telling and importantly, the average assessed value per acre of land in the Rail Corridor is less than half of that of the City's "green field" industrial park.

The goals of the York City Rail Park project are ambitious: the reuse of 100 acres of rail corridor property, an additional $33 million in new assessed value and the creation of 3,000 jobs, most of which will be within walking distance for former welfare recipients. The estimated public and private investment is a minimum of $50 million over the next ten years. Through various public and private partnerships the City has begun to implement its strategies.

A Model for the Future

Charrette participants chose to focus on one of four brownfield sites in the Rail Corridor as a way of stimulating alternative ideas to traditionally challenging situations. The idea was to pick a site which might demonstrate successful urban revitalization in a highly visible location. In this way, future revitalization efforts might garner support from this first success.

The Columbia Gas site was chosen as the focus for the charrette. The site is comprised of eight individual parcels with a total of approximately 8.64 acres, and will soon be under York City Redevelopment Authority ownership.

The Gas site is located within the central portion of the Rail Corridor, directly across from an historic foundry site renovated into a restaurant and commercial space with open space and a boat basin. The Gas site, with both rail and vehicular access, fronts the Codorus Creek, the river around which the City was built. The site is also the terminus for a rail-to-trail bike path. Future plans include expansion of the rail/trail bike path to connect local parks, residential neighborhoods and community facilities, as well as provide regional connections to trails and paths.

Several parcels located south of the rail line are zoned commercial waterfront and commercial neighborhood while the remaining area is zoned general commercial with an enterprise overlay district. The site is also located within an established Foreign Trade Zone.

The Gas site is ideally located one block north of the Historic Central Business District and retail strip, as well as adjacent to the City's Mural District. It is surrounded by established residential neighborhoods with distinctive architectural details, a commercial district and also a neighborhood park.

Phase I and II Environmental Assessments have been completed for the site. There is an indication of some soil contamination on a 1.6 acre parcel, former site of the gas manufacturing facility. This parcel originally contained two underground gas holding tanks. The remaining tank contains a substantial volume of pumpable tar. Tar and vapor recovery will continue until 1999.

The City's Perspective

The city believed it was losing out on business expansion as commerce and industry located and relocated to out-lying suburban parks, from downtown areas. As part of its redevelopment plans for this site, the York City Department of Economic Development envisioned building a "virtual industrial park" which mimics popular suburban industrial parks. It was believed that potential commercial and industrial clients prefer:

• comfort with sameness: clients seek similar, nearby industries;

• to be grouped together to take advantage of lower infrastructure costs, therefore an industrial park setting is attractive;

• on-site parking facilities, since mass transit is not part of the culture in most of

Pennsylvania and York County

The challenge presented to participants and panelists was to develop ideas and make recommendations about the best uses for the Columbia Gas site so as to achieve as many of the ambitious goals the City has set forth in the Rail Corridor plan.

An added challenge is the rapid conversion of farmland to industrial parks in the surrounding county . York County is primarily agricultural (in revenue dollars) and employs 3,000 in this field. It is a regional goal to preserve farmland and an historically and culturally important way of life.

Recommendations and Observations

One exciting suggestion, proposed by all of the break-out sessions, recommended rigorous protection and enhancement of the Cordorus Creek corridor, an idea which had not been fully explored by the City. It was expressed that one of the key assets of the site was the Creek and its potential for reintroducing citizens to their long-neglected natural resource.

Marketing: York is a city of convergences: rail/trails and rails, old industry and new industry, history and future. Play off these convergences, such as cuisine opportunities, industrial metal arts center, farm-focused value-added processes, an urban greenhouse.

Economic possibilities:

• Develop partnerships with CEOs of the City's three major companies to brainstorm about industry-related opportunities.

• Develop a rail corridor "center" which snakes through the city. Create or locate industries that can take advantage of this corridor and the brownfields redevelopment effort.

• Promote and develop an industrial ecological incubator site (soy based ink, for example).

• Develop telecommunications support in York which would allow companies who locate here to hit the ground running.

• The site's corner lot is important to attract people. It may be an entrance to a pedestrian promenade to the old building.

• The site cannot be a public area. It needs to be a tax revenue generating place, so it must be privately owned.

• Showcase what York is, has been and would like to become. Showcase manufacturing, environmental remediation, green design techniques.

• Site could have restaurants, stores and possibly residences, with a cafe on the corner with outside seating.

• A combination of light industrial and commercial could be considered. There would be parking in the center, which could function as overflow parking for evening downtown activities.

• Make the site part of the fabric of the city. Don't make it compete with the downtown.

• Research your manufacturing base. Tap into available data bases and inventory what you have. This information will establish a starting point for you.

What do existing industries need?

What industries could complement existing industries?

• Introduce the site to the public, with a picnic, yard sale or other public function and begin to bring the site into the folds of the community, so when you do develop the site, it will already be a part of the community's sense of identity.

After discussing recommendations from each break out session, the York officials stated that the notion of differentiation of this site from suburban sites was intriguing, and they liked the idea of linking an historical manufacturing tradition with green centered development and community connectedness.