Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo today announced $1 million in assistance for Atlanta, GA to help clean up and redevelop the North Yards Business Park in the city's Empowerment Zone into a new business center that will provide 1,000 permanent jobs.

Cuomo said Atlanta will receive a $500,000 Brownfields Economic Development Initiative Grant and $500,000 in Economic Development Loan Guarantees for the project, under a HUD program that transforms polluted and abandoned commercial and industrial sites known as brownfields into productive businesses, housing and recreational developments.

The HUD grant will be used for environmental remediation and the loan guarantees will be used for demolition of dilapidated structures at the Atlanta site.

The Business Park will be developed and owned by a limited liability company called COPA Inc. that is made up of three partners representing neighborhood residents, local government and the business community.

The project will include $85 million in private investment.

"The assistance we're announcing today is an investment in a cleaner environment and a brighter future for Atlanta and its people," Cuomo said. "Around the nation, we are taking polluted sites once given up for dead and bringing them back to life. They will be reborn to provide new jobs for workers today and for our children tomorrow."

"Working in partnership with neighborhood residents, businesses and other government agencies, we are proving that the best days of these brownfields are not in the past, but in the future," Cuomo added. "Brownfields can be cleaned up, they can be made safe, and they can once again become powerful engines for job creation and economic growth."

Cuomo participated from Washington via television satellite in an Atlanta news conference with Mayor Bill Campbell to announce the assistance to the city.

Brownfields include abandoned factories and other industrial facilities, gasoline stations, oil storage facilities, dry cleaning stores, and other businesses that dealt with polluting substances.

Mayors across the country have made brownfields redevelopment a top priority. Dee Dee Corradini, President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Mayor of Salt Lake City, said: "This HUD program is a unique effort to help cities economically revitalize and reintegrate formerly contaminated urban properties into their communities. Mayors look forward to working with HUD to implement the FY99 round of this key program."

Since 1993, the Clinton Administration has taken a series of actions to clean up and redevelop brownfields and return them to productive use, including: providing seed money to communities for revitalization; removing regulatory barriers to redevelopment; and providing a targeted tax incentive to businesses that purchase and clean up these sites.

In May 1997, Vice President Gore announced the Clinton Administration's Brownfields National Partnership, which brings together the resources of more than 20 federal agencies to address brownfields cleanup and redevelopment issues in a coordinated approach. Through the National Partnership, HUD is working closely with other federal agencies to provide communities with the financial and technical assistance necessary to revitalize brownfields.

Federal Housing Finance Board Chairman Bruce A. Morrison said that two weeks ago the Board adopted a regulation expanding the authority of Federal Home Loan Banks to make advances for economic development targeted to brownfields. "We look forward to continuing to work with HUD to bring the nation's cities together with the Federal Home Loan Banks and their community bank members to develop brownfields as productive economic assets in our urban areas," he said.

More information about brownfields redevelopment activities is available on HUD's web site or by calling 1-800-998-9999.