Palouse Producers Brownfield Site

The City of Palouse is a small community in southeastern Washington that has typical challenges rural towns have with creating and sustaining a vibrant Main Street. After achieving great success in rebuilding downtown streets and sidewalks, the Main Street was still marred by a blighted, contaminated former gas station.

MFA led an integrated brownfield planning process to engage the community in creating a vision for re-use of the former gas station and to resolve the legacy contamination issues. MFA prepared a risk management and funding strategy that allowed the City to acquire and clean up the property while minimizing their liability and obtaining state and federal grants to cover 100% of cleanup costs. 

The City acquired the property at no cost and entered into a Prospective Purchaser Consent Decree which allowed them to define and limit their liability before taking title to the site. The property has been remediated and was shovel ready for redevelopment. After identifying a buyer for the property, a brewery and veterinary clinic were developed in 2023, completing the story of turning Main Street blight into a community asset. 

With MFA’s assistance, the City: acquired the property and obtained a Prospective Purchaser Consent Decree to limit their liability, obtained a combination of state and federal grants to fund 100% of environmental assessment and cleanup costs, created a community-supported vision for future use of the site, and provided assistance with marketing the property. In 2023, The Palouse Producers Brownfields Site received a Small Community & Impact Phoenix Award.