Haley & Aldrich delivers a path to closure and significant cost savings on a brownfield cleanup project

Client challenge

Our client owned a large site that had been used for industrial manufacturing from the early 1950s until 2014. Previous operations left a legacy of complex environmental impacts and liabilities, including 330,000 square feet of obsolete manufacturing facilities. These facilities cost the client more than $500,000 a year in maintenance, repairs, and security.  

To address past contamination and make the property productive for future redevelopment, our client needed to fully understand and address contamination at the site as well as remove the old infrastructure that was now only a liability. They relied on Haley & Aldrich’s guidance to address regulatory and technical requirements that would prepare the site for redevelopment, trusting our extensive local knowledge of the state’s environmental regulations and integrated service approach — spanning environmental investigation and remediation to demolition and construction — to complete the job.

Our approach

We built a strong partnership with our client, managing this project for more than a decade. We started by conducting historical research and site investigations to help the client understand the environmental contamination that remained at the site from past manufacturing operations. The site’s history was complicated: Previous companies had operated there for decades with little regulatory oversight, leaving behind flammable metals like magnesium and zirconium, as well as significant quantities of chlorinated solvent, mercury, and other contaminants.  

The site prior to demolition consisted of 330,000 square feet of obsolete manufacturing facilities.

Our research helped persuade the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) to enter the site into its Brownfield Cleanup Program (BCP), which benefited our client by reducing liability, offering a path to closure with regulatory certainty, and securing redevelopment tax credits. By working closely with the NYSDEC throughout the project, our team also secured timely approvals that moved forward critical environmental and construction aspects of the project. 

To execute safely and efficiently, we assembled a multidisciplinary construction, technical, and field team that took a design-build approach. Given that the outdated manufacturing facilities were so expensive to maintain, the client opted to demolish them and also removed extensive asphalt and concrete ground cover. We leveraged our internal construction expertise to design a demolition plan, develop bid packages, and select a contractor, streamlining the process and saving our client money. We also secured permitting to remove extensive asbestos contamination and demolition debris.  

We found efficiencies where we could throughout the remediation and reconstruction phases of the project. We tested and reused some of the subbase materials from demolished roadways and other infrastructure, recycling approximately 11,720 tons of asphalt. We also brought in innovative technologies to investigate the site, such as a database for managing the extensive field data and membrane interface probe profiling and geophysical surveys to rapidly evaluate subsurface conditions. We also used state-of-the-art drone survey methods that expedited work, increased accuracy, and significantly improved our ability to communicate key data at critical project stages. 

The site following demolition now includes approximately 40 acres of vegetated land.

Not only did the Haley & Aldrich team focus on the work at hand, but we also found forward-looking solutions for our client. Early in the project, we recommended outside legal counsel to align ongoing construction work with a future site redevelopment strategy, which allowed our client to capitalize on all available BCP tax credits. We also connected the client to an energy firm to evaluate the possibility of using the redeveloped site as a solar generation facility; this move had the potential to also align the project with additional BCP tax incentives.

Value delivered

• Put our client on a clear path to site closure, reducing long-term costs and liabilities  
• Engaged proactively with NYSDEC over the course of more than a decade to facilitate all project phases efficiently 
• Saved our client significant costs through our in-house construction capabilities and management of the contractor bidding process 
• Removed old infrastructure and facilities from the site, rehabbing the site into approximately 40 acres of vegetated property ready for future industrial use

“Haley & Aldrich has been a trusted advisor and partner to us, significantly advancing this project toward regulatory closure. Their work, completed in a relatively short period, has positioned us to achieve major brownfield milestones, reducing both costs and liabilities.”