Site Reuse Planning

Advancing Reuse of Power Plant Sites is Critical to the Just Transition Process

Power plant sites play a pivotal role in New York State’s Just Transition process. Their redevelopment has the potential to address long-standing economic inequities and support environmental justice while also creating stable and good-paying jobs, local business development, and public infrastructure. Identifying market- and community-supported reuse options for these sites and taking steps toward implementation is key to advancing redevelopment.

Benefits of Site Reuse

Power plant site reuse offers a variety of economic and environmental benefits for communities.

• Preventing sites from lying dormant: Redeveloping a power plant site at the end of its useful life prevents it from sitting unused or from becoming an eyesore and reactivates the site as a productive piece of the community.
• Advancing environmental justice: Power plant sites present opportunities to equitably revitalize communities that may have experienced adverse environmental and economic impacts.
• Creating job opportunities: Power plant site reuse and redevelopment can create both construction and long-term jobs, including opportunities to leverage plant workers’ skillsets in new industries.
• Extending tax revenues: Reuse is an opportunity to bring in new and multiple uses to power plant sites, which can help diversity and extend the local property tax base. 

Choosing the Best Reuse Option

Take the unique site characteristics into account when considering the best reuse option(s) for your site and community.

1. Consider the physical character of your site: Identify your site’s unique opportunities and constraints to determine which reuse options are viable. Important considerations include ownership and liability, building and site infrastructure, environmental conditions, transportation connections, and surrounding uses. Also consider any assets that could be leveraged to add value, such as a waterfront location.
2. Consider market conditions: Analyze local and regional economic conditions and trends to see which types of uses are feasible within the market context.
3. Engage stakeholders: Work with community members and stakeholders to create a vision and goals for the reuse of the site that is grounded in market realities.
4. Assess the reuse options: Evaluate the viable reuse options identified through engagement, analysis, and the market study. Consider metrics, such as potential job creation, potential tax revenue, cost, level of remediation required, and alignment with community goals for comparison.
5. Identify a preferred option: Based on the above analyses, identify the “preferred” (or several preferred) reuse option(s) that best leverages site and community priorities.

Other Reuse Considerations

• Leverage existing site conditions and assets: Some sites may be better suited to accommodate certain reuse options because of their existing conditions, whether they be size, location, or on-site infrastructure. For instance, waterfront sites are uniquely positioned for port/marine commerce, industrial, or green space reuse. Similarly, large-scale renewable energy reuse works best on a site with more physical space.
• Determine level of necessary remediation: Certain reuse options require less remediation (e.g., energy reuse, industrial reuse) than others (e.g., residential reuse, mixed-use reuse). Identifying your preferred reuse option(s) early in the just transition process can assist in planning for and pursuing funding for the necessary level of remediation.
• Consider mixed uses: Redeveloping a site with a mix of uses can help support the long-term viability of the site while also activating it to a greater extent than some single-use options. A mixed-use site also benefits the host community by bringing in multiple, diversified tax revenue-positive enterprises.

Key Steps for Facilitating Site Reuse

Site reuse is a complex process that requires significant planning and ongoing collaboration to be successful. These are the critical steps to facilitating site reuse in your community.

Collaborate With the Site Owner

Open communication and collaboration with the site owner are essential elements of site reuse. In some cases, the site owner might be interested in redeveloping, or being involved in, the redevelopment of their site. In other cases, a change in ownership might be necessary to allow for redevelopment by other interested parties.

Market the Site to Developers

Generate private developer interest in the site and its unique redevelopment opportunities by using marketing techniques targeted at developers such as a Request for Proposals (RFP), a website, social media, or property “sell sheets” that provide details about an available property to generate interest among developers. 

Pursue Funding

Costs for redeveloping power plant sites can range from under $10 million for smaller sites with limited site modifications to upwards of $150 million for larger sites which may require building demolition, environmental remediation, and/or infrastructure investments. Most projects will require multiple funding streams from multiple sources, both public and private. Assess available funding sources and develop a strategy to finance your project.

Additional Site Reuse Planning Resources

• A Comprehensive Approach to Repurposing Retired Coal Power Plant Sites: Transforming Liabilities to Assets   (Electric Power Research Institute, Inc, 2019)
• Repurposing Retired Power Plants Into Green Neighborhood Centers  (Smart Cities Dive)
• There’s Value in Old Power Generation Components  (POWER Mag, 2022)
• Repurposed Coal Plant Sites Empower and Revive Communities [PDF]   (American Clean Skies Foundation, 2012)