Jessika Ziglar/02-22-08 11:26/Pollution
Cherokee Investment Partners, a real estate company based in Raleigh, NC, is buying often contaminated land (or "brownfields"), cleaning it up, building various things like apartments, and reselling it.
The company has bought up sites like a tainted GM plant in Quebec and Burlington Mills here in NC even though it was contaminated by asbestos and PCBs. Cherokee and Donald Trump even intend on building homes, apartments, and a golf course in New Jersey on top of four old garbage dumps.
But the company isn't just buying up land that no one wants for a profit, Tom Darden the cheif executive of the company and a Morehead Scholar, says that since most of the land they buy is near cities, "One of our goals is always to fill in the holes, rather than build out at the edges." Thus preventing even more urban sprawl. Cherokee also builds "green" energy-efficient houses, schools, and intends on trying to get an old transit line working in Montreal to encourage more use of public transportation.
Unlike the majority of the pollution articles out there, they one had a positive message. Its a breath of fresh air to see there is a company making a profit not at the expensive of the environment, but by cleaning it up and redeveloping it in more responsible ways. AND it's based out of North Carolina!
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/20/news/companies/gunther_cherokee.fortune/
1 comment:
That's interesting to hear, and hopeful to say the least.
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