Site-inventory project ID’s, markets developable sites in Broome County

BINGHAMTON — In an effort to be as proactive as possible in spurring development in Broome County, The Agency has been working with a consulting firm to identify, rank, and create marketing sheets for developable sites around the county.

In the first phase of this project, Elan Consulting and Planning of Albany identified 250 sites, Brendan O’Bryan, director of community and economic development at The Agency, says. “Once we knew all the sites, we could figure out which would have the highest level of community impact and the barriers for those sites to achieve future development.”

Using those factors, and some others, The Agency worked with the consulting team to rank the sites in advance of creating “spec sheets” for them all, he says.

“In phase one, they collected a lot of baseline info on sites,” O’Bryan says of Elan Consulting and Planning. Phase two will include much more detail, even including environmental information on relevant sites. Ultimately, the spec sheets will go on the Agency’s website — accessible to developers and anyone else with an interest.

“These spec sheets will have everything on them that developers ask for when seeking ownership of a site to develop on,” he says.

The Agency received an Appalachian Regional Commission Area Development grant totaling just over $85,000 for the project. That grant runs through late October, and the Agency hopes to have an initial batch of about 75 spec sheets online by the end of the year, O’Bryan says.

“There are 250 sites, so obviously we can’t do spec sheets for all 250 right off the bat,” he says. The plan is to get that first batch of 75 live on the website and continue to work on the rest of them. Then, as a parcel is developed, it can come off the website and a new one will replace it. “So, it’s constantly getting reloaded,” says O’Bryan.

The project came about as the Agency would receive leads for anonymous businesses looking for certain types of sites. The Agency was finding it could not quickly react to such requests and provide information fast enough.

With areas such as renewable energy, batteries, and semiconductors growing quickly, there has been a growing amount of interest in developable sites and requests for information, O’Bryan says.

With the new spec sheets, The Agency will be able to quickly send information on multiple sites that might meet a developer’s needs, increasing the chances the developer may select a Broome County location.

The process has been eye opening, O’Bryan says. “I think there were more [sites] than we thought,” he notes. The organization was also able to see some areas where multiple smaller sites were close together and could be packaged as a parcel cluster.

“What also surprised us were some sizes,” he adds. The more urban areas are running out of large, developable sites, but this process revealed some larger rural, often green field sites, with potential, he says.

Another thing the process enabled the Agency to do is note parcels that have a lot of potential, but a few small barriers. “We might not have the funds to throw everything at a site to get it ready, but we can chip away at it,” O’Bryan says. Every little bit can help make a site more attractive to developers.

The Agency is the lead economic-development organization for the county, governing the Broome County Industrial Development Agency and the Broome County Local Development Corporation. The Agency is also part of the Leadership Alliance, a partnership between it and the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce.