The consortium will focus on seven key areas: jobs and economic development, housing, natural resources, cultural resources, energy, land use and transportation, and health and wellness. Among their goals are creating effective job training programs, exploring alternative energy options, increasing transportation choices, and promoting community health resources such as school gym classes and physical activity programs. GroWNC hopes that these goals will promote growth and interconnectivity between counties, rather than each county taking its own path. Carrie Runser-Turner, a senior planner at Land-of-Sky Regional Council, a multi-county planning and development organization, spoke about the importance of this regional focus:

 ”GroWNC better conveys our goal of growing together as a region. Really, what we are trying to do is look at the choices we make in these areas [and] how they are interrelated.”

GroWNC is funded by a 2010 Department of Housing and Urban Development Regional Planning grant through the Partnership for Sustainable Communities. For more on GroWNC, visit their site.

For more on the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, visit www.smartgrowthamerica.org/partnership.

CMAP’s study is also funded by a HUD grant through the Partnership for Sustainable Communities and is focused on supporting community-level change by providing subgrants to local municipalities. More than 60 projects will be completed through this regional grant.

For more on CMAP and the new housing study, visit their site.

For more on the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, go to www.smartgrowthamerica.org/partnership.

“PowerSaver is another financing tool in the toolkit. It’s one of the best options for many homeowners to pay for a comprehensive home energy upgrade and protect themselves from the devastating combination of high heating oil prices, inefficient old houses, and cold winters.”

To learn more about the PowerSaver program and Efficiency Maine, visit their site.

To learn more about HUD and the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, visit www.smartgrowthamerica.org/partnership.

Confluence Park, South Platte River, Denver. Photo from Flickr user tux404

With funding provided by an EPA Brownfields Area-Wide Planning grant through the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an assessment of the 3,500 acres of land along Denver’s 11-mile portion of the South Platte, which contains 33 brownfield sites and intersects 14 of Denver’s 77 neighborhoods, is currently underway. It will identify specific areas that have the potential for redevelopment, but have suffered from disinvestment over the years. “We’ve been looking for sites that relate to significant public investments such as greenway improvements, storm drainage projects, flood plain removal, and rail transit that runs parallel to the river”, says Tim Watkins, Senior City Planner for the City of Denver, one of the planners working on the project.

Perhaps most importantly, this approach is also being integrated into transit-oriented development (TOD) projects in the area. The light rail and commuter rail system, FasTracks, is expanding rapidly, with 8 stations already built within walking distance of the river, and 4 more planned to open within the next 5 years. One such TOD effort, known as the Denver Livability Partnership,  is made possible through another Partnership for Sustainable Communities grant funded by both a HUD Community Challenge Grant and DOT’s TIGER II grant program. City planners consider this grant, along with the EPA brownfields redevelopment funding, to be “parallel investments” that will work towards the same goal of making these communities more connected to the river and the public green spaces around them.

An EPA green infrastructure grant is another opportunity to expand the connection between brownfields redevelopment and transit-oriented development. “We can start to explore innovative green infrastructure approaches” to redevelopment, says Courtland Hyser, a Senior City Planner for Denver also working on the brownfields project. Storm water quality treatment for infill development has typically occurred on a site-by-site basis. The City would like to explore the potential of consolidated water quality facilities at the regional and sub-regional scale, and to consider how this green infrastructure could complement neighborhood parks and greenways.

One of the most important aspects of the South Platte River project is the ongoing process of gaining feedback about the project from property owners and residents in the community. Planners have been identifying specific properties that are underutilized, such as warehouses without tenants (especially prevalent in the industrial sections), and reaching out to the property owners to “help them understand what opportunities they have”, says Watkins. “Brownfields are barriers to reuse of property. Our process will provide information and ideas to property owners that will help them to reposition themselves as the real estate market evolves.” By involving the surrounding residents and stakeholders in the process, these exploratory concepts will benefit not only individual property owners, but also the surrounding community and the City of Denver as a whole.

If your community received a Partnership for Sustainable Communities grant and you would like to share your success story, contact Jessica Holmberg.