Oct. 16--A Charlotte company wants to redevelop a Superfund hazardous-waste site bordering the Catawba River into a sprawling green-energy industrial park that it says could create 1,000 new jobs.

Tom McKittrick of Forsite Development, which buys and remarkets corporate industrial buildings, sketched plans for the 667-acre site Thursday at the annual Green Conference of the Charlotte Chamber's NorthWest Chapter.

ReVenture Park, as it will be called, could support biomass-fueled and solar power plants, biodiesel production, a high-tech sewage treatment plant, technical research facilities and space for energy-focused nonprofit groups, McKittrick said.

The concept is predicated on growing demand for renewable energy, the availability of federal stimulus grants and green-energy tax credits, and expected federal limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

"Timing is absolutely critical for this project," McKittrick said.

To be eligible for stimulus dollars, for example, projects need to be "shovel-ready" in 2010. Winning approval by then for a waste-to-energy plant that burns wood scraps, garbage or sewage sludge would be challenging, he acknowledged.

The concept feeds into Charlotte's hope of becoming an energy hub, but McKittrick said Forsite doesn't plan to ask for local-government money. Financing would come from private equity firms, he said.

Clariant Corp. now owns the site, fronting 1.5 miles of the Catawba, where groundwater is contaminated by dye-making chemicals dating to the 1930s. The property has been on the federal Superfund list -- the nation's worst hazardous-waste sites -- since 1982, and Clariant has spent millions of dollars cleaning the tainted water.

Forsite recently signed an option to buy the property from Clariant. It would continue, and accelerate, the cleanup.

The Environmental Protection Agency is considering taking the site off the Superfund list, but hasn't fully agreed, said Laura Niles, a spokeswoman in Atlanta. EPA would want the ongoing groundwater cleanup to continue to fall under federal hazardous-waste law, she said.

North Carolina seems willing to include the site in the state brownfields program, which supports redevelopment of contaminated industrial sites by limiting the liability of new owners, said Chris Barnard, Clariant's general counsel in Charlotte.

The site has been largely dormant since Clariant moved production elsewhere several years ago, Barnard said. But one energy company is already a tenant -- CoaLogix, which manages pollution-control devices for coal- and gas-fired power plants.

"Clariant is not interested just in unloading the site, but in creating jobs," Barnard said.

McKittrick said Forsite has had preliminary talks with several potential partners, including Duke Energy, which is under a state mandate to produce renewable energy, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities. The utility wants to build a new treatment plant along Long Creek, which flows through the site.

"Depending on what (Forsite's) project entails, there COULD be joint opportunities for water reuse, biosolids or power generation," CMU spokesman Vic Simpson said by e-mail. "But our conversations are very preliminary."

Charlotte's Calor Energy Consulting and the engineering firm Withers & Ravenel are working with Forsite on ReVenture Park.

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