Brownfield Planning on the corridor scale: The Tamiami Trail

The Tamiami Trail Petroleum Brownfields Revitalization Initiative in Florida is a good example of corridor planning with cooperative stakeholder engagement. A Florida Scenic Highway that connects Tampa to Miami, the Tamiami Trail passes through big cities, rural towns, and the Everglades. New interstate development has shifted traffic away from the Trail, and abandoned gas stations have become commonplace. The Revitalization Initiative focuses on a 70-mile stretch of the Trail in Sarasota and Manatee counties that is contaminated by more than 500 petroleum brownfield sites and touches many distressed communities.

The Revitalization Initiative has successfully incorporated the needs of all the communities along the Trail into
a single vision and capitalized on existing community networks and organizing structures along the length of
the corridor. When the Initiative launched in 2009, the Sarasota/Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization
(MPO) became an organizing vehicle for community outreach. Revitalization Initiative staff also partnered with
local nonprofits, educational institutions and the NAACP to solicit community input and share updates, and
participated in monthly meetings with stakeholders to capture as much community feedback as possible
throughout the planning process.

The Brownfields Revitalization Initiative is still underway. Project staff are currently working to inventory former
gas station sites and brownfields along the corridor and bring new partners into the effort. For more information, download the Environmental Law Institute’s fact sheet about the Initiative at:

http://www.eli.org/pdf/tamiamitrailfactsheet102709.pdf.