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Across the nation, efforts to characterize the benefits of redeveloped brownfields challenges state government and the brownfield professionals who work with and for them. While many laudable efforts to capture the potential benefits are legion, there is yet to be a state directed effort to capture the collective benefit. But there is a bright spot on the horizon. 
In the spring of 2008, New Jersey, through its Office of Smart Growth and the NJ Brownfield Redevelopment Task Force, initiated an investigation into developing a statewide database. The National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfield Redevelopment at Rutgers University responded to the challenge to find the data and propose a strategy to capture it in a standard format.
The recent study established a series of benchmarks, but found the only way to definitively address this will come through a rigorous systematic effort to gather the data from all state and municipal databases.Municipal incentives are need to provide data on completed projects when propoerties are remediated and redeveloped. With incentives in place, municipal reports and state data would be tracked by a central data center which could aggregate data from municipalities to promote redevelopment in their communities. The report challenges New Jersey to create an efficient strategy to make it compelling to implement.
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