LOOKING PAST THE HEADLINES: TRUMP’S IMPACT ON BROWNFIELDS, COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE LENDING
What the New Administration Means to Site Redevelopment and Property Lending
NOTE TO READERS: This article was just published in the Summer 2017 Edition of the Environmental Bankers Association’s Journal, and appears here with permission from the publisher. Links to the full Journal containing timely articles related to lender property risk management are provided after this article.
Just a few months into the new Presidential Administration, there are more questions than answers about what lies ahead for commercial real estate lending and site redevelopment. Will Dodd Frank be repealed? What’s the future of the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lending programs? Will funding for the U.S. EPA’s brownfields programs be slashed under Administrator Pruitt?
There is no doubt that the federal legislative environment is a very dynamic one. More clarity will emerge as new agency heads take their places, budgets undergo the negotiation/approval process, and new programs and policies take shape. This article summarizes what we know now with respect to contaminated property assessments/redevelopment and commercial real estate finance.
EPA UNCERTAINTY AND BROWNFIELDS
One panel at the May PRISM 2017 conference in Charlotte titled: “Brownfields Under Trump: What the New Administration Means for the Future of Site Redevelopment,” focused on the future of brownfields redevelopment opportunities as a new EPA moves into position. Moderator Mary Ann Grena Manley, Deputy Editorial Director, EHS Division at Bloomberg BNA, acknowledged that
“All of the talking and tweeting about the U.S. EPA potentially going away or gutting regulations is making everyone understandably nervous. The good news is that, for better or for worse, because of our notoriously slow regulatory and legislative process, it is unlikely that anything drastic is going to happen quickly.”
In the months following the inauguration, it has been business as usual, and for the most part, there have been no sweeping impacts on industry and the regulated community yet. The future of EPA’s programs hinges largely on decisions made on the federal 2018 budget battleground. It has been widely publicized that the current proposal reflects a reduction in spending in a number of areas, including brownfields—but historical perspective is important. As noted by Patricia Overmeyer, the Land Revitalization Coordinator at the U.S. EPA’s Office of Brownfields Cleanup and Redevelopment: “Brownfields appropriations have been going down since FY11, even during the Obama administration.”
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