Doing brownfields requires interaction with local and federal government officials. So, O’Neill got to know the regulators. One of these people, Jerry Nugent, now director of the Montgomery County (Pa.) Redevelopment Authority, first met O’Neill in the early 1980s. The would-be brown-field developer, who was then in his early 20s and looking for a business niche, made an immediate impression. “He is one of those unique people” who absorb information “like a sponge,” Nugent says. “He’s an expert on these regulations, how they apply, and how to adhere to them.”
So is his staff. O’Neill and his employees describe their brownfield process in one simple phrase: “by the book.” They follow the EPA and DEP regulations closely, often planning to remediate the site before the company even buys the land. They will search records to see what factories were on a site and walk the site. To do this, they draw on their in-house expertise: Half of O’Neill’s 100 employees focus on site assessment work, including master planning, zoning, environmental concerns, scrap, machinery resale, legal issues, and acquisitions. And they move fast. “It takes two weeks to know everything we need to know about it,” O’Neill says.
Then the O’Neill team crafts its plan. Since there is no such thing as a typical brownfield site, the company must develop a strategy to fit each location. In some cases, there may be land pollution, and in others there may be water or air pollution. Sometimes, all three types of contamination exist. “The longer the history [of the site], the more the operators did whatever they wanted to do,” says Richard F. Heany, senior vice president, project principal, and director of acquisitions for O’Neill Properties Group.
Costs can vary too, with the company’s cleanup tab running from essentially nothing to $20 million, depending on the land.
Regardless of the site, O’Neill’s track record and attention to detail helps him secure government assistance on many projects. “The team he has put together has become sophisticated at dotting all of the ‘i’s and crossing all of the ‘t’s and, as a consequence, getting significant public investment to help underwrite the costs of brownfield remediation,” Nugent says. “There are lots of developers around the country who are trying to access the same money.”
King of Prussia The appeal of the Riverview site (Riverview Landing is the first phase of the mixed-use project) was obvious. In addition to its scenic location next to Valley Forge National Park and the Schuylkill River, it was close to Rt. 422, which was completed within the past 10 years. When the highway opened, the King of Prussia Mall and a number of businesses became accessible to new communities. “All of those communities further out started clogging up traffic along 422 because there were too many people from farther away driving into King of Prussia,” Poncia says. “This 70-acre site is the first exit from King of Prussia off 422,” so the new residents will be closer to Philadelphia and spend less time on the road.
When O’Neill sees a site in a top-notch location, he goes all out to get it. Exhibit A: the Millennium, also built along the Schuylkill. This site, located in Conshohocken, Pa., will feature five towers totaling 1,086 luxury apartments and condominiums, an extended-stay executive suite hotel, 200,000 square feet of Class A office space, new retail stores and restaurants, a one-mile parkland, a central plaza, walking and biking trails, and a new Villanova University boathouse. “I chased that property for 20 years and through four different owners, but I finally got it,” O’Neill says. “Everyone else would have given up 18 years ago. I just kept plugging every single month until I got it.”
Now that O’Neill has developed a reputation as a brownfield developer, sellers and localities will come to him with sites. “I became known as the guy that corporations could sell to and count on when they wanted to do a restructuring,” he says. “I started getting calls from these big companies that had environmentally impaired sites. And, I’ve always done the right thing in townships, so then they call me when they have problems.”
O’Neill Properties Group usually buys about 95 percent of the sites it pursues, which are generally on the water, near major interstates, near major malls or shopping areas, and, most importantly, near Philadelphia’s Main Line. “The Main Line is like the Gold Coast,” says Pam Bennett, executive director for the Greater Philadelphia Apartment Association. “Every city has its area and, in Philadelphia, the Main Line is money.”
And, the Main Line doesn’t have much apartment competition, which makes the area even more enticing. “A lot of product in the suburban area is very old,” says Jerry Kline, a partner in the Philadelphia law firm of Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel, which represents multifamily companies in the market. “It gets transferred from Class A to B to C to D. There’s not an awful lot of new growth.”
