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Webinars

Here you will find recordings and resources for our most recent webinars. Check back often to see new recordings or visit our news section to attend our next webinar live!

Brownfield Academy

Welcome to the NJIT TAB Webinar Archive!

(click on a link below to be redirected to the video)

 

Recent Webinars

TAB Talks: Avoiding Redevelopment Legal Pitfalls, April 8, 2025

Navigating the legal landscape of brownfield redevelopment can be complex, but understanding key regulations and liability protections is essential for successful revitalization. Join NJIT TAB Manager of Brownfield Redevelopment, Dawn Bembry Breeden, in conversation with Wanda Chin Monahan, Esq., an environmental attorney specializing in brownfields redevelopment, as they discuss:
 
✓ How environmental law has evolved and its impact on brownfield redevelopment
✓ Key legal risks and liabilities associated with contaminated properties
✓ Strategies for mitigating legal risks when acquiring and redeveloping brownfields
✓ Zoning laws, tax incentives, and long-term sustainability considerations
 
Whether you're a developer, municipal leader, or community advocate, this discussion will provide crucial insights into the legal challenges and opportunities in brownfield redevelopment.

TAB Talks: From Brownfields to Greenways, March 25, 2025

Environmental Sustainability Planner at NJIT TAB, Carrie Martin, and a few special guests present "From Brownfields to Greenways."

Does your community have vacant, abandoned, potentially contaminated properties abutting abandoned railroad tracks or a river? Consider activating those properties with a greenway to encourage tourism and recreation opportunities while putting land back into productive use! At this TAB Talk you’ll hear about how the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is transforming an approximately nine-mile, 100-foot-wide former rail line into a thriving park with recreation and transportation amenities for over 16% of New Jersey’s population. Then, listen as the Trust for Public Land and the City of Atlanta, Georgia speak to their partnership to revitalize brownfields in metro Atlanta for a greenway along the Chattahoochee River.

TAB Talks: ArcGIS StoryMaps - Market Opportunities and Celebrate Successes, February 25, 2025

Our Director of Environmental Services, Cailyn Bruno and her guest, Greg Beal, discuss ArcGIS Storymaps – Marketing Opportunities and Celebrating Successes. Here, they talk about how interactive maps and webpages are great ways to market available brownfield opportunities, communicate environmental status in plain language, and provide geographic context to your community's successes. Here at NJIT TAB, we often speak about community engagement and involvement as one of the keys to redevelopment success. Perhaps you can add ArcGIS to your redevelopment toolkit!

Blight to Bright: A Brownfield Workshop, January 31, 2025

NJIT TAB and the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council discuss learning how to identify, assess, clean up, and redevelop underutilized, potentially polluted properties (brownfields) in your community.
 
This session will cover:
 
✓ Strategies for brownfield redevelopment
✓ Available funding and technical resources
✓ Case studies & best practices
 

Out With The Old, In With Renew; Utilizing Brownfields for Renewable Energy, January 14, 2025

Join NJIT TAB's Brownfield Redevelopment Specialist, Elise Molleur, Cuddy + Fedder LLP's Partner for Land Use and Zoning/Chairman for Energy and Environmental, Neil Alexander, and NC Clean Energy Technology Center's Rebekah de la Mora to learn about renewable energy and the potential, opportunities, and benefits of incorporating them in your brownfield redevelopment projects. They are going to discuss the types and demand of renewable energy in today's economy, the economic and environmental benefits of incorporating renewable energy on redeveloped brownfields, regulatory challenges, and success stories to motivate your project.
 
Discover these important elements:
 
✓ The rising demand for renewable energy
✓ Economic and environmental benefits
✓ Overcoming regulatory challenges
✓ Inspiring success stories
 

Redeveloping Brownfields for Energy and Environment, January 13, 2025

During this virtual workshop, NJIT TAB's Environmental Sustainability Planner, Carrie Martin speaks to the intersections of Energy, Environment, and Economic Development with brownfield redevelopment. She provides guidance and resources from the federal level and utilizing her background in hazard mitigation planning, speaks to ways that Kentucky can build back better and more resilient from recent storm events. Kiersten O'Leary, Brownfield Program Coordinator from the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, provides an introduction to the virtual workshop and shows how the Kentucky Brownfield Program can help with sustainable and resilient brownfield redevelopment.

Preserving Communities: Brownfield Redevelopment to Minimize Displacement & Uplift Legacy Residents, December 12, 2024

In this panel, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-funded Brownfields Revitalization Anti-Displacement Strategies (BRADS) program will discuss what resources and tools are available to help local governments and community leaders minimize gentrification and displacement when redeveloping brownfield sites. BRADS will present a series of brownfields case studies on gentrification patterns of the past and showcase tools to identify relevant anti-displacement policies.

If Your Ship Hasn't Come In, Build An ARC: Preparing A Competitive EPA Brownfield Grant Application, October 30, 2024

There are the four types of EPA Brownfield grants:
 
✓ Multipurpose Grant – a range of planning, assessment, and cleanup activities at one or more brownfield sites in target area(s)
✓ Assessment Grant – activities like: making brownfield inventories, planning, environmental assessments, and community outreach
✓ Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) Grant –  loans that are used to cleanup brownfields
✓ Cleanup Grant – carry out cleanup activities at brownfield sites by the applicant
 
Today, we will be discussing the last three, or the ARC grants, which are being offered by the EPA for Fiscal Year 2025. The EPA solicits these grants on an annual basis.
 

Preparing A Competitive EPA Brownfield Grant Application, October 3, 2024

Intimidated by the prospect of submitting an EPA brownfield grant? Then join the NJIT TAB team of experts to learn effective strategies for preparing a competitive application. In this one-hour virtual workshop we will discuss:
 
✓ Brownfield basics
✓ FY2025 available brownfield grant types
✓ The EPA brownfield grant solicitation schedule
✓ How to approach each of the four application sections
✓ Common applicant mistakes
 

What EPA Brownfields Grantees Should Know: Grant Management, September 5, 2024

New to the world of EPA Brownfields Grants? Or maybe you just need a refresher? The Grant Management webinar is designed to assist EPA Brownfield Grantees successfully manage their grant from the time of award through grant closeout. It will cover EPA grant regulations for maintaining a grant file and reporting to EPA (quarterly, annually, and final). The webinar will also provide guidance on requesting payments from EPA and how to request changes after award.

What EPA Brownfields Grantees Should Know: Davis Bacon Act/Build America, Buy America, August 27, 2024

When it comes to federally funded construction contracts, you don’t know what you don’t know! This Davis Bacon Act (DBA) and Build America Buy America (BABA) webinar provided EPA Brownfield Grantees an overview of these requirements as they pertain to the EPA grant implementation. The webinar included a discussion on the responsibilities of both the grantee and contractors from procurement through construction management and contact administration.

Brownfields and Downtown Revitalization, August 21, 2024

The Hudson Valley Initiative at Pattern for Progress partnered with NJIT Technical Assistance to Brownfield Communities (TAB) for a virtual lunch and learn to teach attendees about successful efforts in the Northeast that utilized brownfield grants and tax credits to revitalize downtowns. This session introduced Hudson Valley communities to a host of programs that have been used to clean up legacy pollution in communities, while also attracting new development to long-time vacant buildings and parcels.

What EPA Brownfields Grantees Should Know: Procurement, August 20, 2024

Confused by the different federal procurement requirements to hire a QEP vs. a remediation contractor? The Procurement Webinar will help EPA Brownfield Grantees better understand procurement requirements related to EPA grants. We will review different methods of securing a contractor or consultant and define the responsibilities of the grantee. Attendees will be given guidance on what to do and, perhaps more importantly, what not to do during the procurement process to ensure compliance with the EPA Cooperative Agreement Requirements.

Luck Favors the Prepared: Grant Writing Webinar, June 19, 2024

Interested in EPA Grants to help revitalize your community's underutilized and potentially contaminated sites (also known as brownfields) and not sure where to start? Waiting on this year's criteria and want to get a head start on what you can do to make your application better with key data and community support? Well, this is the webinar for you! Join Sean Vroom, Director, NJIT TAB to learn more about the following topics:

✓ EPA MARC Grants
✓ Community Engagement Strategies
✓ Data Collection and Utilization
✓ EPA Brownfield Grant Writing (Including Common Mistakes)
 

Life After BOA, March 28, 2024

New York State communities, do you have a Brownfield Opportunity Area (BOA) designation and are unsure what your next steps should be? Don’t have a designation yet, but would like some insight on the process after designation? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this webinar is for you! Our panelists, Carrie Martin, AICP, Environmental Sustainability Planner for NJIT TAB and Lesley Zlatev, Revitalization Specialist for New York State Department of State's Office of Planning, Development, & Community Infrastructure hosted this virtual workshop for New York State communities with Brownfield Opportunity Area designations to learn how to continue the brownfield revitalization process after designation.

Brownfields: A Story to Tell, March 21, 2024

Mr. Rogers carried a note in his wallet that said: "There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you've heard their story." Believe it or not, this can be true even for those abandoned old industrial sites that plague almost every community. This webinar focuses on the significance of being able to tell the history of the impacts of contamination to your neighborhoods, and the humanity in redevelopment potential.

Our Brownfield Redevelopment Specialist, Elise Molleur, walked through the different factors in effective storytelling and why it's an important step in the brownfield redevelopment process. Hydrotechnology Consultants, Inc President and NJIT Adjunct Professor, Maria Coler, brought the American brownfields story into context and focused on the concepts of deep history and path dependency with brownfield sites. By sharing some stories, tips, and tricks, they explored the importance of brownfields in our nation's history and how effectively telling your story can be critical to gaining funding, developing relationships, and engaging the community!

Climate Change and Brownfields 101, March 7, 2024

The impacts of extreme weather events are everywhere. NJIT TAB's own Carrie Martin began her journey towards becoming a climate resilience practitioner due to her family's experience in Superstorm Sandy. The storm knocked out power to her family home for days, and other friends and neighbors fared far worse. Nowadays, events like Superstorm Sandy are not infrequent or one-off events. In this webinar Carrie hopes to equip you all with the tools to help your community build resilience by transforming it's brownfield sites. You'll also get to hear examples of how other communities have seized the opportunity presented by their brownfield sites to install renewable energy to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, and build green infrastructure to handle heavier rains and hotter summers.

Brownfield Contaminants & Human Health, February 29, 2024

When passion meets purpose, things gets interesting. In this webinar Joseph M. Reiner, Brownfield Redevelopment Specialist for NJIT Technical Assistance to Brownfield Communities (NJIT TAB), discusses a longtime personal interest that informed his career path into environmental science: brownfield sites, the historic contamination associated with them, and what it means for our health when we have contaminated sites in our communities. Mr. Reiner will be covering what brownfields are, and give an overview on common contaminants found at brownfield sites, why they ended up there, how these chemicals can enter our bodies, and some of the community screening tools that are available to help us get a fuller picture of environmental health impacts. Quantifying impacts is useful for public health tracking, but that information can also be an asset for municipal planning or obtaining funding for cleanup and redevelopment from the government.

Pop-Up Progress: Unveiling the Magic of Temporary Brownfield Makeovers, February 8, 2024

Redeveloping vacant and polluted sites can be a long process. Some communities have had success with temporary, interim site uses related to pop-up economic, social, or artistic experimentation. This webinar will present the benefits, special considerations, and a toolkit to help local governments, non-profits, and practitioners embark on their own brownfield Cinderella story!

EPA Effective Brownfield Grant Writing Tips, September 28, 2023

Redeveloping Brownfields into Community Assets: New York State Brownfield Programs, November 16, 2022

Brownfields for Beginners Boot Camp, July 20, 2022

Mapping for Success: Using GIS & Remote Sensing to Inventory & Prioritize Your Brownfields, April 5, 2022

Adelantarse Con Su Solicitud De Subvencion Brownfields de la EPA Comience Temprano Es Una Ventaja, 28 de Marzo de 2022

Roadmap To Mill Redevelopment Webinar Series

Webinar #1: New England Mills: Then and Now (September 24, 2020)
Webinar #2: Challenges and Solutions to Redevelopment (October 6, 2020)
Webinar #3: The Funding Stack (October 15, 2020)
Webinar #4: Adapting to Changing Times (October 27, 2020)

Brownfield 101 Webinar - Piedmont Triad Brownfield Program, May 13, 2020

Winning and Managing Brownfield Grants, March 1, 2018

EPA Brownfields Grantees: "How to Get the Right Contractor on Board", December 11, 2015

​Creating Living Shorelines to Enhance Brownfield Sites, May 29, 2014

ASTM Phase I Changes and AAI Webinar, March 13, 2014