Brownfields Redevelopment Practice Specialty

The Environmental Law Group and Real Estate Group have a practice specialty in the redevelopment of brownfields. Our experience in this area includes the purchase, sale and environmental liability management of contaminated or potentially contaminated sites. We also advise clients on transferring or obtaining the land use and environmental permits often required to construct and operate new developments. We provide added valued by assisting in strategic planning and community outreach, in cases where that service is appropriate.

Hope Creal Jacobsen is Chair of the firm's Environmental Practice Group. In the course of representing clients for more than a decade, she has been involved with many brownfields sites, working closely with the Maine Attorney General's office, the Maine DEP VRAP program and other staff at DEP involved in the remediation and redevelopment of industrial and commercial properties. She regularly advises clients on compliance, reporting, liability and permitting issues that arise under Maine's land use and environmental laws, and their federal counterparts, including, among others, CERCLA, RCRA, TSCA, and the Clean Water Act.

Gordon Scannell, Chair of the firm's Real Estate Practice Group, and Paul Pietropaoli, a director in the Real Estate Practice Group, have extensive experience in sales and acquisitions, including many brownfields properties slated for redevelopment or reuse. Collectively, they have represented individuals, business entities including non-profits, municipalities, lenders and borrowers in all aspects of commercial and residential real estate for over 30 years.

Jim Katsiaficas is Chair of the firm's Land Use and Municipal Law Practice Group. He has practiced environmental and land use law, municipal law and administrative law since 1985. He has served as town attorney for a number of Maine municipalities, and has represented both municipal and private clients in federal Superfund and State uncontrolled hazardous substance site matters and in several brownfield site proceedings. Mr. Katsiaficas has served as chair of the Maine State Bar Association's Natural Resources and Environmental Law Section and its Public Sector and Government Lawyers' Section.

Some brownfields projects we have handled in the most recent past include:

• The redevelopment of a portion of an area of downtown Portland into the Portland Public Market
• The donation of the former Portland-Bangor Waste Oil Site in Wells
• The redevelopment of the former state mental health campus in Gray/New Gloucester, now known as Pineland Farms
• The relocation of a scrap yard facility from the Bayside neighborhood of Portland to another Brownfield site in an industrial area of the City