NYC Pre-Development Design Grants are intended to stimulate redevelopment of brownfield sites (i.e. contaminated properties) by providing a mechanism for developers to encourage property owners to engage in redevelopment partnerships or consider property sale, and thus stimulate land acquisition contracts for brownfield sites. Similar to cleanup investigation incentive grants, pre-development design grants provide funds during the earliest stage of development and often prior to availability of lender financing. Projects that advance are candidates for enrollment into the NYC local brownfield cleanup program.

The NYC Brownfield Environmental Insurance Grant Program is currently under development and is not yet available. It is anticipated that grants under this program will be available in early 2009. Stay tuned for more details.

Anticipated Grant Delivery Mechanism. Numbered items in the narrative below are illustrated in the underlying flow chart.

1. NYC Mayor's Office of Environmental Remediation (OER) works in conjunction with NYC Economic Development Corporation to administer the grants.
2. OER earmarks roughly $750k of its annual $3M brownfield incentive funding to provide pre-development design grants to be disbursed in allotments of up to $30,000 to grant applicants (approximately 25 grants per annum).
3. Grant applicant selects vendor from an OER-approved list. OER grants are passed through the applicant to the vendor for pre-development design services.
4. Vendor performs pre-development design services according to a service agreement approved by OER (one contract is negotiated for all vendors).
5. Vendor completes services and issues pre-development design report to grant applicant.