Contributed by Joy Imperial, Grant Writer, PPM Consultants
Every year, the Florida Redevelopment Association’s Best Book of Projects captures what redevelopment looks like at its best across Florida. The publication highlights award-winning efforts led by Community Redevelopment Agencies (CRAs), from revitalized downtowns and adaptive reuse projects to affordable housing, infrastructure upgrades, and public spaces that bring communities together. More than a collection of awards, the Best Book tells a broader story about how CRAs tackle blight, leverage partnerships, and turn underperforming places into engines of community life.
For CRAs and redevelopment professionals, it also highlights a recurring challenge: the most transformative projects often begin on the most uncertain sites.
Those projects reveal something redevelopment professionals know well: meaningful change rarely happens on easy sites. CRAs are often working in places where private investment has stalled—vacant parcels, obsolete corridors, aging infrastructure, and properties shaped by decades of disinvestment. They’re the sites that feel “one good idea away” from reinvestment—until the hard part shows up. Unanswered questions about what’s on the site—and what it will take to reuse it—can quickly stall momentum.
Brownfields and CRAs: A Natural Intersection
Several of the Best Book’s signature projects are located within state-designated Brownfield Areas—places where prior commercial or industrial uses can create enough uncertainty to slow reinvestment until the upfront questions get answered. And in Florida, that overlap is not rare. The state has 593 designated Brownfield Areas, spanning urban cores, older commercial corridors, waterfronts, and long-underutilized properties.
Even if you’ve never used the term brownfield, you know the sites. They’re the former industrial parcels, aging shopping centers, vacant buildings, or underutilized land where someone inevitably asks, “What used to be here?” That question—whether it’s about old tanks, historic fill, legacy solvents, or simply unknowns—can be enough to cool down a deal. Not because the vision is wrong, but because uncertainty is expensive. For CRAs and their private partners, that uncertainty often translates directly into cost, timeline risk, and financing challenges.
This is where brownfield programs intersect naturally with CRA work. Brownfield tools don’t change the redevelopment mission—they support it by reducing uncertainty. They replace guesswork with information, clarify cleanup pathways, and reduce the risk that keeps private partners and lenders on the sidelines. In other words, they help CRAs do what they already do—just with fewer unknowns.
Turning Designation into Leverage
Brownfield designation matters because it opens the door to leveraged resources. At the state level, designation can unlock incentives that help offset the real costs of redeveloping complicated sites. At the federal level, the EPA Brownfield program can support the critical early steps—site assessments, planning, and cleanup—that determine whether redevelopment is feasible in the first place.
Used together, these tools allow communities to stack resources rather than rely on a single funding source. In practice, this means fewer gaps in funding and a clearer path to project feasibility. That stacking is often what makes the difference between a site that sits idle and one that can realistically move forward.
For instance, the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council (ECFRPC) has secured $2.1 million to date in EPA Brownfields Coalition Assessment Grant funding for Phase I/II assessments and planning—capacity that benefits coalition communities like Kissimmee as they pair brownfield designation with CRA-led redevelopment.
Kissimmee: Leveraging Brownfield Tools in Practice
Because the City of Kissimmee includes a designated Brownfield Area (KERA) and participates in the ECFRPC Brownfields Coalition, state and local brownfield incentives can be paired with the ECFRPC assessment and planning services—exactly the kind of stacking that helps CRAs stretch redevelopment dollars.
That framework matters because it allows redevelopment planning and environmental due diligence to move in tandem, not sequentially. It also helps align environmental due diligence with redevelopment timelines—something that often becomes a friction point on more complex sites. Instead of waiting for problems to surface mid-project—when they are more expensive and disruptive—Kissimmee uses brownfield tools to address uncertainty upfront, when it is least expensive and most effective.
Where Uncertainty Meets Opportunity: The Former Kmart Site
The former Kmart site in Kissimmee is a 22-acre property with exactly the kind of history that can stall redevelopment if left unaddressed. Past uses included an automotive repair facility as part of the former KMart—highlighting a challenge familiar to most CRAs: potential impacts from historic activities that create enough uncertainty to make lenders and developers hesitate.
Redevelopment starts to move when uncertainty is reduced. In 2025, using the no-cost services offered through the ECFRPC Brownfield Program, PPM completed a Phase I Environmental Site Assessment (ESA) for the property, documenting recognized environmental conditions that warranted further investigation. The Phase I ESA was also conducted prior to transfer of ownership which preserved the City’s ability to tap into EPA Brownfield Cleanup dollars (if necessary). These step shifted the conversation from assumptions to documentation—and created a defensible foundation for next decisions.
Kissimmee’s approach to financing and risk did not rely on a single source. Instead, the City identified a deliberate stack of brownfield incentives aligned to the site’s challenges.
On the federal side, options included pursuing an EPA Brownfields cleanup grant directly to the City. On the state side, the toolbox expanded to include potential incentives for private developers through the Florida’s Voluntary Cleanup Tax Credits, the Brownfield Redevelopment Job Bonus Refund, the Brownfield Area Loan Guarantee Program, and a sales and use tax exemption on building materials.
In similar projects, PPM has seen that aligning these tools early in the planning process can significantly reduce redevelopment delays and improve project certainty. This approach is a strategic response to the realities of complicated sites. Cleanup tax credits or rebates help offset environmental costs that don’t generate revenue. Job bonuses and loan guarantees improve project feasibility and lender confidence. Tax exemptions reduce construction costs at scale. Together, these tools can transform a site that might otherwise sit idle for another decade into one that can realistically move forward.
The Takeaway for CRAs: More Leverage, Less Uncertainty
CRAs deserve credit for taking on the hardest sites—the ones with history, uncertainty, and risk baked in. The lesson from Kissimmee isn’t that CRAs need to change what they do. It’s that marrying CRA redevelopment goals with brownfield designation, incentives, and local and regional brownfield programs can stretch redevelopment dollars further and move tough sites faster.
When these tools are aligned, CRAs aren’t just funding projects—they’re solving the problems that prevent projects from happening at all. That’s how uncertainty gets reduced, capital gets unlocked, and long-stalled properties finally become places communities can use and be proud of.
As the FRA Best Book makes clear, Florida CRAs are already delivering exceptional outcomes. Brownfield programs simply give that hard work more leverage—helping ensure that even the toughest sites have a clear path from vision to reality. When used strategically, they turn uncertainty from a barrier into a manageable—and often solvable—part of the redevelopment process.
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