About the Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center

Western Pennsylvania’s landscape is littered with brownfields, vestiges of the region’s industrial heritage. The Western Pennsylvania Brownfields Center at Carnegie Mellon University (WPBC), helps to promote the value of underutilized sites in the region, by acting as a regional resource for communities and small businesses to realize sites’ inherent benefits and eliminate development barriers. The WPBC’s work addresses the environmental, economic, land-use, and community issues surrounding the revitalization of brownfields—sites with real or perceived environmental contamination.

The WPBC is a neutral platform, which brings together a variety of stakeholders including researchers, public officials, property owners, and developers to uncover opportunities and strategies for continued development of the region’s brownfields. With funding from the likes of the US Environmental Protection Agency, Small Business Administration, and the Heinz Foundation, the WPBC applies academic research and decision support tools to real-world problems facing public and private investors. 

Pictured left to right: (front row) Brownfields Center 2007 Summer Student Researchers: Lauren Hudock, Maura Carroll, Melinda Angeles, and Andrea Fisk; (back row) Program Coordinator Meredith Meyer Grelli and Executive Director Deborah Lange.