Brownfield Development Selection Using Multiattribute Decision Making

Brownfields are potential development opportunities for the communities in which these old industrial sites sit. The Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center at Carnegie Mellon University has developed and tested a multiattribute decision-making process for complex brownfield development selection. Local community organizers (in this case, Main and Elm Street managers) collected data on site attributes related to environmental conditions, demographics, development potential, infrastructure conditions, and market realities. Concurrently, decision makers [in this case, the Board of Directors of Keystone Community Oriented Real Estate (CORE) Services (KCS), a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Downtown Center, with a mission to promote real estate development in Main and Elm Street neighborhoods and business districts] weighted the attributes consistent with their priorities and the availability of resources. Then, weights are applied to the attributes collected by the community organizers to estimate a total score for each property of interest. The result is a ranking of properties that can be used to guide investment decisions or public funding. This paper describes the process used and provides a guide for application elsewhere.