CUOMO AWARDS $3 MILLION TO HELP CREATE JOBS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN WINSTON-SALEM, NC

WASHINGTON - Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo today announced $3 million in assistance for Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to develop an office/industrial park at the Airport Business Park. The project will create an estimated 1,100 jobs and stimulate more than $13.2 million in additional investment.

"One of the most important challenges facing cities today is cleaning up and revitalizing abandoned industrial and commercial sites that were the engines of America's economic greatness in our past," Cuomo said. "Working in partnership with communities, we can transform these areas into generators of new jobs and new prosperity in our future."

Winston-Salem will receive a $1 million Brownfields Economic Development Initiative grant and $2 in loan guarantees to reduce slum/blight at the Airport Business Park. The Airport Business Park is located in the federal Enterprise Community, which includes the City's most distressed neighborhoods. The objectives of this project are: (1) to acquire, clear and prepare the site for the construction of a 370,000-square-foot office/industrial park; (2) to recruit at least 12 businesses to locate in this park; and, (3) to create employment opportunities. The Airport Business Park will attract businesses needing access to air transportation, and high-tech and medical businesses needing warehouse and distribution facilities.

The Airport Business Park is located along the Liberty Street Corridor, a major north-south route through eastern Winston-Salem. Once considered the northeast gateway of the City and a prominent residential, cultural and social area, the corridor changed from a high-rent district to an industrial hub that now lies blighted with underutilized land and buildings. The City's Business Development Office will work with the Chamber of Commerce and the City WorkForce Development and Jobs-Link programs to develop job training and employment opportunities for neighborhood residents and welfare recipients. Key participants in this $24 million project include: the Forsyth County Airport Commission, WorkForce Development, the Chamber of Commerce - East Area Council, Winston-Salem Business, Inc. and the Pangaea Development Corporation.

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

The loan guarantees, also known as the Section 108 Program, provide communities with a source of financing for job creation, housing rehabilitation, and construction of public facilities and large-scale development projects.

Vice President Gore announced the Clinton Administration's Brownfields National Partnership in 1997 to bring together resources of over 20 federal agencies to address brownfield cleanup and redevelopment issues in a coordinated approach. HUD works with other federal agencies to provide communities with financial and technical assistance to revitalize brownfields.

Cuomo accompanied President Clinton last month on the President's New Markets Tour of economically distressed communities that highlighted the economic potential for investment in underserved markets. The President is proposing tax incentives and investment tools that will make it more attractive for corporate America to search for opportunities in such communities.

A recent HUD report titled New Markets: The Untapped Retail Buying Power In America's Inner Cities (was linked to

• Inner city neighborhoods possess enormous retail purchasing power - estimated at $331 billion last year, or one-third of the $1.1 trillion total for the central cities in which those neighborhoods are located. The report suggests that businesses not yet operating in inner cities should not ignore that large domestic market.

• Despite their huge buying power, many inner city communities are "under-retailed," with sales that fall significantly short of residents' retail purchasing power. The report makes clear that there is a large inner city consumer market worth competing for.

Content Archived: January 20, 2009