New Tags Now Available to Identify Key Property/Project Features

Posted By : Captain Planet Apr 9, 2018 View More Posts

BL’s taxonomy of real estate types, land uses, property conditions and site characteristics is a useful shorthand to summarize a site’s vitals and signal the marketplace. The taxonomy of real estate types, land uses, property conditions and site characteristics can quickly communicate a site’s details to the market.

As BL's users know, the ecosystem of available tags in the BrownfieldListings.com taxonomy provide powerful signals listers can use to summarize key features, property conditions and/or site characteristics. Once selected, BL’s taxonomy tags appear wherever the property or project appear on the platform. It’s an easy way to give anyone who looks at the property/project a quickly digestible visual thumbnail summary.

BL’s taxonomy tags power BL's search engine and can be used in combination to quickly paint the big picture of any site or project. The complete ecosystem of BL’s taxonomy tags for Primary Status and Secondary Conditions can be used in combination. So, BL's taxonomy is two dimensional.

Listers may select one of six taxonomy tags as choices for primary status, whereupon you may select numerous other taxonomy tags as secondary conditions. All the selected tags will work together to paint a simple but powerful picture of your property or project.

When Listers use the taxonomy to accurately tag conditions at their property, it sends clear signals to the market—avoiding confusion and false-starts. The taxonomy and BL's other Market and Use tags help power the immense due diligence capability of a complete BL listing, which can include your own narrative descriptions, pictures and other primary real estate documents that you can upload directly to each listing.

News taxonomy tags add greater specificity to BL’s due diligence shorthand.

Recently, BL took input in a series of working sessions in order to take input from our users and refresh the taxonomy. As the market evolves and technology developers, new segments can emerge. Old site features can become relevant or valuable in new ways.

When that happens, developers and site selectors go hunting for these new data points of opportunity. In the marketplace and project platform on BrownfieldListings.com, they primarily go hunting by using BL’s taxonomy to segment and search for opportunity. To meet their needs, improve search and give listers all the relevant descriptors they need to communicate essential details to the marketplace, BL has added Bluefield as a primary status (where only 1 choice may be selected) as well as the following secondary conditions:

Adaptive Reuse

Adaptive reuse redevelops a previously developed site, building or structure in new construction that utilizes the site and materials on-site for purposes other their original build or design. Along with brownfield revitalization and redfield redevelopment, Adaptive Reuse is an effective way of reducing urban sprawl and environmental impact. By reusing an existing structure on an already developed site, the new energy required to develop these sites is diminished, as is the material demand and waste that comes from completely demolishing old sites and rebuilding using all new materials. Through Adaptive Reuse old, unoccupied buildings can become suitable sites for many different types of use. As such, adaptive reuse can be a highly effective strategy on many Greyfield and Brownfield properties that leads to unique outcomes with features and character difficult or impossible to construct from scratch on a Greenfield.

Airport Access

Many airports provide access for use by numerous on-site and nearby properties. Some airports are located near railway trunk routes for seamless connection of multimodal transport. It is also common to connect an airport and surrounding economy with rapid transit, light rail lines or other non-road transit. Large airports often provide access also through controlled-access roadways and highways. Such advanced transportation systems are vital to maintaining the connections necessary to service the modern logistics-centric digital economy. Good transit also lowers the risk of missed flights and delays due to traffic congestion.

Green Infrastructure

Green infrastructure uses the built-environment to mimic, enhance or restore natural functions to better manage water and weather events. Green infrastructure is a cost-effective, resilient approach to managing wet weather impacts that also provides many community benefits and amenities (such as additional open land, eco-preserve and greenspace). While single-purpose greywater and stormwater infrastructure—conventional piped drainage and water treatment systems—is designed to isolate and move water away from the built-environment, Green infrastructure reuses and treats stormwater at its source and integrates its flow into the built-environment to deliver environmental, social, and economic benefits. At the city or county scale, green infrastructure often exists as a patchwork of natural areas that provides habitat, flood protection, cleaner air, cleaner water and recreational opportunities. Many practitioners are working to connect these local pathworks into regional green infrastructure networks and systems. Increasingly combined with Pedestrian-Oriented Development, green infrastructure techniques are able to produce nature-friendly, economic, resilient and amenity-rich developments that are as beautiful as they are healthy and sustainable.

Healthfield

A Healthfield is a site that can be used to improve access to healthcare or to improve the physical and/or psychological health of the community. A Healthfield can be any parcel of land, there is no physically defining characteristic. In real estate redevelopment and economic development, a “Healthfield Strategy” uses available land to encourage specific types of development targeted towards various community health challenges, such as: inadequate access to health care in medically underserved areas, the presence of high food insecurity and/or food deserts, lack of parks, greenspace and pedestrian amenity/infrastructure (including low handicap accessibility and/or unsafe built-environments for children, seniors or other sensitive receptors). In addition to using Healthfields to fill missing sources of health in the community, Healthfield strategies can also target specific health disparities. Drawing a “Health Zone” on a map to identify areas with the highest rates of infant mortality, asthma-related emergency room visits, diabetes, lead poisoning or other medical outlier is often the first step towards reverse engineering a strategy to improve health outcomes in the community.

Historic Preservation

Historic Preservation, or heritage conservation, refers to efforts to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other built-environments of historical significance. In seeking to conserve the built-environment, Historic Preservation is distinct from similar efforts to preserve or conserve natural places, or Greenfields, such as primeval forests or wilderness areas. Unlike a Heritage Site, a project where Historic Preservation is a concern or motivating factor can include a far larger number of sites than those which have received official historical designations.

Micro-site

A Micro-site is a very small property that is not suitable for many kinds of real estate development. Micro-sites can be as small as a tenth of an acre or less. Properties can also become practical Micro-sites by virtue of easements or negative covenants that functionally restrict the site’s development potential. Micro-sites can be most valuable when used in a civic capacity or in combination with the uses of surrounding properties. They can be ideal sites for farmer’s markets, pocket parks, pop-up markets and many other small or interim uses. As such, Micro-sites are increasingly being seen as unique resources that can unlock small, but valuable placemaking strategies, often referred to as “tactical urbanism.”

Mine-scarred

Mine-scarred properties are those which either have land used directly in mining or natural resource extraction, or share associated waters and surrounding watersheds where extraction, beneficiation, or processing of ores and minerals (such as coal, iron and oil) has occurred. Off-site migration is a problem common to many mines and prevalent in many types of mining, particularly by way of water. Particulate matter, escaped chemicals and pollution mix with water, often reacting in even more dangerous compounds. The acidic water that can result seeps through and flows out of abandoned mines long after they are closed.

No Further Action (NFA/NFR)

A No Further Action (NFA) letter is an official notice issued by the jurisdictionally relevant environmental regulatory agency stating that identified contaminants present at a particular property, or at any other location to which a discharge originating at the property has migrated, have been investigated and remediated in accordance with applicable remediation statutes, rules and guidance, to a standard appropriate for the intended use of the property and/or offsite locations affected by migrating contamination. Once obtained an NFA often clears the way for development, though NFA's can be limited in scope. NFA's are sometimes referred to as No Further Remediation (NFR) letters in some jurisdictions.

Pedestrian-Oriented Development

Pedestrian-Oriented Development (POD) is a type of real estate development designed for the maximum utility of the pedestrian. PODs are typically designed for easiest pedestrian access with sidewalks, bike paths, trails, and greenspace with children, seniors and other sensitive populations in mind. Whatever the specific means, pedestrians are the main orientation of a POD's design, rather than the typical orientation toward automobile access and parking. Buildings are generally placed close to the street and entrances oriented to the sidewalk, as well as windows and/or display cases along building facades. Buildings typically cover the large majority of the developed site with little or no parking, often giving way to internal parks, greenspace and other amenities. Some POD are redeveloping multiple blocks by eliminating the roadways and forbidding automobiles to create room for pedestrian-centric placemaking.

Public-Private Partnership

A Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is typically an agreement (often a long-term contract) between a private party and a government agency. The PPP model is well-established in real estate, construction and infrastructure including roads, bridges and public transport systems as well as for civic and social infrastructure such as schools, prisons, and hospitals. The wide use of PPPs has met a variety of public needs since the founding of the United States. One of the first examples was the Lancaster Turnpike, a toll road built by the private sector with public sector oversight and rights-of-way. It was opened in 1793 to connect Pennsylvania farmers with the Philadelphia market and drastically reduced the travel time in between and reliability of transit. The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, and the first Transcontinental Railroad, finished in 1869, are two other early PPP examples.

Rail Access

Access to a rail line via direct connection, rail spur or team track is always a relevant factor in a property's development. Locating along a rail corridor can be a primary element of a company's site selection process, if they will not or cannot locate anywhere else. Real estate enjoying an active connection to a railway, or that is able to access an active railway, is often sought for its logistical advantages over sites without rail access.

Seaport Access

Seaports typically provide access for use by numerous on-site and nearby properties. Some seaports are located near railway trunk routes for seamless connection of multimodal transport. It is also common to connect a sea and surrounding economy with dedicated rail lines and seaports often provide access also through controlled-access roadways and highways. Such advanced transportation systems are vital to maintaining the connections necessary to service the modern e-commerce and logistics-centric digital economy. Use this tag in combination with the Bluefield tag.

Transit-Oriented Development

Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is a type of real estate development that maximizes the amount of residential, business and leisure space within the walking distance, or walkshed, of a site with public transportation. A TOD typically includes a transit station with light rail, one or more bus stops and/or other points of transit surrounded by a high-density mixed-use area. Generally, a TOD is designed to be more walkable than other built-up areas by using smaller block sizes, bike paths, wider sidewalks and by reducing the amount of land dedicated to automobiles. The densest areas of a TOD are typically located within a radius of ¼ to ½ mile around a major point of transit, which is the consensus scale considered suitable for pedestrians. A TOD is similar to a Pedestrian-Oriented Development (POD), and while scaled for the average pedestrians walkshed, the dominant design force driving a Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) is a point of transit; most often a light rail station.