Targeting smart growth in New York State

Wyandanch was selected by New York State as one of three focal points for brownfield redevelopment under its Spotlight Communities Initiative. The other two communities are the South Bronx and South Buffalo. Wyandanch was selected, in part, due to the town’s support for transit-oriented development (TOD), says Paul Beyer, director of Smart Growth Planning for the State of New York. “We want to create models that others emulate” to revitalize brownfield sites, he says.

The state Smart Growth program, which began in 2007 under then-Governor Eliot Spitzer, has taken a geographically targeted approach to allocating resources. In addition to the three redevelopment sites listed above, the New York State Environmental Protection Fund recently awarded $500,000 in smart growth grants to the Lower Hudson Valley, the fastest growing area of the state. Most of the grants support planning for TOD.

A “Smart Growth Cabinet,” consisting of the heads of major state departments, agencies, and divisions, including the Department of Transportation, Department of State, Department of Environmental Conservation, the Housing Finance Agency, and the Empire State Development Corporation, was established to focus resources and create policy.

The cabinet recommended policy changes in 2009 that would steer funding toward “priority growth centers,” provide a tax credit for transit-oriented development, make tax-increment financing more readily available for municipalities, and create a historic preservation tax credit, among other changes.

“We don’t have a single comprehensive smart growth law like Maryland, Vermont, or Massachusetts,” Beyer says. “But we are slowly, quietly, but tenaciously, making New York a smart growth state.”