Land Banks

Land Banks can be a powerful tool for redevelopment of vacant, abandoned, tax-delinquent, and foreclosed properties. Property tax delinquency is the most common denominator among vacant and abandoned properties. These properties can be a significant obstacle to redevelopment and revitalization. Land Banks are public authorities or special purpose not-for-profit corporations that specialize in land banking activities - acquiring surplus properties and converting them to productive use or holding them for long-term strategic public purposes.

Land banks usually must be enabled by state legislation; approximately 10 states have enabling legislation. North Carolina does not yet have this, but it is a potentially strong tool for the future.

Frank Alexander is a leading expert on land banks, and his book, Land Banks and Land Banking, is available free-of-charge online here through the Center for Community Progress's website:

Land Banks and Land Banking

Building American Cities Toolkit

The Building American Cities Toolkit helps practitioners think through strategies, identify specific tools to carry out those strategies, and learn about communities elsewhere that have used those tools, to improve the land buildings, neighborhoods and other areas that make up a city’s built environment.

Neighborhood Conservation Overlay Districts

Preservation NC has put together a great resource about Neighborhood Conservation Overlay Districts. I like to refer to this method of neighborhood preservation as 'historic preservation lite.' NCODs tend to focus on a few defining characteristics of an area like setbacks and form and not the specifics like window types and paint colors.  NCODs are also generally administered by local government staff and not an appointed commission.  The picture below is two houses in Apex's Small Town Character Overlay District that were redeveloped using the Town's overlay standards.

http://www.presnc.org/Preservation-Answers/Neighborhood-Conservation-Overlay-District

Federal Programs that support Brownfield Redevelopment

The 2011 Brownfields Federal Programs Guide is a great resource to connect you with potential funding resources. Many federal grant programs can be used on brownfield sites, even if they do not specifically state so in their guidelines. This guide can lead to creative use of funding to achieve site reuse, and shows the great variety of funding available. Click the link below to take you to a PDF version of the guide.

2011 Brownfields Federal Programs Guide