New Brownfield Task Force formed in Cecil County

John Gonazalez, PE and Kevin Hansen, PG, LEED AP, of LandmarkJCM, on August 2, 2011 were named to a new Cecil County Brownfield Task Force.

The Brownfield Task Force members, selected by Cecil County's Commissioners, will consider draft ordinance for Brownfield overlay zoning and make recommendations to the Commissioners based on their review.

As a resident of Cecil County and branch manager of LandmarkJCM's Havre de Grace office, John Gonzalez says he's

"very interested in seeing the County have a tool to help get economic development going." He says "this type of ordinance can help redevelop sites within the growth corridor, and the County can get properties back on the tax roles."

Kevin Hansen, Director of LandmarkJCM's Science Division, brings years of knowledge and experience in remediation of Brownfield sites and says he is

"excited to have the opportunity to share my experience in helping the County find ways to encourage owners to clean up sites that are contaminated."

The outcome of this Brownfield Task Force can be a Win-Win for all!

BRAC Know Before You Go Expo

This past weekend JCM Environmental was again the Signature Sponsor for the Know Before You Go Expo – Part 2 at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. The Expo was to assist the thousands of transferees in learning more about the Delaware and Maryland area prior to their move prior to September 2011.

JCM Environmental teamed with 8 of our Green Building clients to educate the transferees about the value of buying a green built home. We also educated them on the value of an NAHB green home certification in order to ensure that the home they are buying is really green. The participating builders were: Bestfield Homes, Blenheim Homes, Cornell Homes, Empire Builders, Reybold Development, RC Peoples, Silverstock Builders, and Thompson Homes.

Several JCM Employees attended and manned the Expo booths, along with builder representatives. Everyone we talked to was a transferee and was making the move from New Jersey to either Maryland or Delaware. We estimate at least 500 people attended this Expo and received exposure to green building and our client’s communities.

JCM also made numerous great connections with the Expo host Cecil County Chamber of Commerce staff members, new builders, Realtors, government officials and others at the Expo.

For more information, please contact Howard Fortunato at howard@jcmenv.com or visit http://www.jcmenv.com/ for more information.

BRAC to be a windfall for this entire region, and Cecil County Chamber

Yeserday I went to the Cecil County Chamber lunch meeting in Rising Sun.
The speaker Clark Turner of Clark Turner Signature Homes did an
excellent presentation about BRAC and the impact to Cecil County.
HUGE impact!

This lunch was a great event and the Chamber is a tremendous resource which begs to be tapped! There were about 100 people there and they were all friendly and want to do business. Went around the room before lunch, each person stood up and introduced themselves and had 30 seconds to plug their business. Engineers, bankers, consultants, educators, you name it. A good mix of businesses.

Clark Turner relayed some staggering BRAC statistics. Aberdeen
Proving Ground will see 27,000 new jobs of which 23,000 are coming
between now and 2012!. All these jobs are high tech, the AVERAGE
salary at the APG will be around $86,000! There is or will be 3 or
4 million square feet of offices, which is second only to the
Pentagon! Of all the 55,000 BRAC people which will be moving to the
area, 85% will be home buyers (to relate the 55,000, there's about
80,000 that live within the city limits of Wilmington). He thinks 75%
of these people will want to live in Cecil County – why? Because
they will be closer in the middle to family and friends back in Fort
Monmouth – that same logic will help bring buyers to Delaware.
Clark indicated a demand of 12,000 lots are needed to
satisfy all these BRAC buyers. In Harford and Cecil County there are
only 3,000 approved lots in inventory so the 9,000 lot shortfall will
have to be absorbed in surrounding areas and new projects to enter
the pipeline – including Delaware and Pennsylvania! He mentioned that APG has spent a huge amount of money to upgrade their infrastructure and roads on the
base. However the State of Maryland has not kept up! So not only will there be initial congestion, but the opportunity will be there for municipal and state public works projects for roads, sewer, etc. He further mentioned that Cecil County is flat in the middle of a technology corridor – Delaware is chemical capital of the
world, New Jersey is pharmaceutical capital, APG and Fort Mead and
some other is the military capital, northern Virginia is the communications capital…

Now Clark's information was well researched and documented. But even if you discounted half of these numbers, theres still tremendous business and economic opportunities. Talk about the catbird seat!