This article appeared in the March 2026 issue of CAM Magazine.
No matter where you live in Michigan, you’ve likely seen and experienced the impact of the state’s nation-leading brownfield redevelopment program. It could be the apartment you or your kids live in, your favorite restaurant in town, the factory your neighbors work in, the hotels you stay in, the entertainment venues you frequent, or the park in your community. Michigan’s brownfield program has supported hundreds of projects across the state since its inception in 1996. In fact, the most recent report to the legislature included the status of more than 1,000 projects from Marquette and Munising to Benton Harbor and Monroe.
If you work in commercial construction, there’s a good chance you and your company have benefited from the brownfield program as well. Just last year, more than $3 billion in construction was made possible in part by brownfield redevelopment financing. It is the most commonly used—and most effective—economic development tool that local communities have to help facilitate private investment in construction activity. In 2025, three state departments reviewed and approved 64 brownfield projects with total investment ranging from $500,000 to nearly $800 million and a median project size of $15 million.
These brownfield projects are taking place on vacant, contaminated, blighted, or historic properties—sites that produce little to no value in their current state. They are helping reinvigorate our urban and rural areas alike. The program helps developers and communities address the extraordinary costs of redeveloping brownfield property and leverages new incremental property taxes created by private investment that result in increased property values. A portion of those new taxes are reimbursed to developers for the cost of certain activities including environmental cleanup, public infrastructure improvements, and demolition. This mechanism is referred to as Tax Increment Financing (TIF) and is now a common and necessary component of financing for projects in Michigan.
Importantly, the brownfield program is one tool in the state’s economic development toolbox that has enjoyed long-term bipartisan support. While other flagship financial incentives have come and gone—various tax credit programs, film industry incentives, job creation funds, and the like—the brownfield program has endured and has in fact been expanded to increase its impact and applicability over time. Originally conceived in 1996 as a program to help offset the cost of cleaning up contaminated property, numerous amendments over the years have expanded the incentive to more broadly address the cost of redevelopment and help urban and rural communities partner with the private sector to address unproductive property. It has become the faithful and predictable tool that investors, lenders, and local governments rely upon. This staying power can be attributed to several key factors:
Performance-based incentive. The program provides an incentive only if and when a developer completes the project they pitched. There are no checks written up front, and if the project doesn’t happen, then the developer gets no incentive.
Broadly applicable. The brownfield program can support any type of project that results in increased property values, regardless of whether it’s residential, commercial, or industrial. The incentive can be used to make investments in public space like parks and trails as well. The program can be used for projects in urban and rural areas with a wide range of eligibility criteria.
Responsive to local priorities. The program is statutorily defined, but there is broad ability for local communities to tailor their brownfield program to impact their local priorities. Whether your community is focused on industrial development for job creation or mixed-use development to create more housing options, the brownfield program can be tailored to help tackle those challenges.
In 2017, recognizing the long-term success of the program and the opportunity to provide Michigan communities with more resources to support their locally defined priorities, the legislature created the Transformational Brownfield Program (TBP) as a new program component with legislation that passed with an 80% majority in both the house and senate. The TBP added the ability for developers to leverage state income tax and sales and use taxes as a new form of TIF to support projects that would be transformational to local community and economic development.
TBP is only available for projects that are the most important and impactful for local communities, and projects must be anticipated to provide significant community and economic benefits beyond the project itself, as well as meeting minimum investment criteria. In order to maintain the credibility of and support for the program during the TBP expansion, the legislature wisely required that TBP projects undergo financial underwriting (often by a third party) to ensure that the incentive approved is only in the amount necessary for the project to become financially viable. In addition, knowing that transformational projects look different in different communities, the legislature created different tiers for communities of different sizes as well as a requirement that projects be spread around the state.
Specifically, the following criteria are already in the legislation, ensuring opportunity for varying-size communities, promoting geographic distribution, and maintaining the credibility of the program as an effective and fiscally responsible tool that consistently delivers outcomes:
Geographic distribution. The law requires that, subject to receipt of qualifying applications, the state must approve approximately equal numbers of TBPs in communities of less than 100,000, between 100,001 and 225,000, and communities larger than 225,000. To date, the state reports that there have been six projects approved or under invitation to apply in communities with population less than 100,000, seven projects in midsize communities, and three projects in the largest tier.
Varying investment thresholds. Transformational projects will inevitably be larger in Detroit and Grand Rapids than in Munising and Muskegon. To qualify, a project in Detroit must have private investment of at least $500 million. That number decreases with community size, all the way down to $15 million in communities with a population of less than 25,000, with four tiers between. Achieving transformational impacts in Lansing requires a different level of investment than in Vicksburg, and the legislation accommodates that reality.
Fiscal responsibility. TBPs require financial underwriting and require that the incentive awarded is only the amount necessary to make the project financially viable. The maximum incentive is therefore limited both by the actual tax revenue created by the project and by the underwriting to determine the appropriate incentive. While TBP incentives are by any measure significant, they are subject to appropriate levels of oversight to ensure they are reasonable and prudent.
Since its inception in 2017, twelve TBP projects have been fully approved by local communities and the state. According to the approved applications, when completed, these projects will result in the following outcomes:
Beyond these direct application numbers, the transformational projects act as a catalyst for additional investment and construction activity in the surrounding areas. And to be clear, TBPs often contain a series of related projects in one application; therefore, in total, these 12 TBPs represent more than 50 distinct projects or project phases, meaning that there are opportunities of varying sizes, not just mega-projects. No other program has the potential to create such significant impact across the state.
The brownfield program, and TBP specifically, are critical tools in the economic development toolbox to ensure continued investment in Michigan communities. When TBP was created in 2017, the state set a $40 million annual cap on the program and an $800 million total cap for all projects. The program was successful, and in 2023, those caps were doubled to $80 million annually and $1.6 billion total, amendments that enjoyed an 80% majority in the house and more than two-thirds majority in the senate. Keep in mind that these caps are not an allocation of budget dollars. The caps represent the amount the state can agree to reimburse to developers only if and when they undertake the TBP project.
Today, we are at a point where those caps have effectively been reached and legislative action is necessary to allow transformational projects across the state to move forward. Both the House and Senate, and both Republicans and Democrats, have introduced bills to raise these caps. Unfortunately, none of the bills have passed out of the legislature and been delivered to the governor.
If the caps are not raised, we will not see any additional transformational projects in our communities in the short term. Without these transformational projects, sites will sit vacant, jobs won’t be created, planned new apartments will not be built, and vacant, obsolete buildings will continue to sit vacant, producing no value for Michigan communities. And no construction contracts will be signed.
There are always reasonable debates to be had around the margins of any economic development program. We should always strive to improve process, promote transparency, increase opportunity and create efficiency whenever possible. You do that in your business every day. But when something is working well and producing the intended results, the best thing to do is to continue that momentum – not to change course or let ancillary debates stall progress.
In the case of TBP, legislation that raises the program caps is essential to unlocking billions of dollars of private investment, creating thousands of new jobs and housing units, cleaning up vacant contaminated property, and transforming communities across the state. And in so doing, putting CAM members to work.