Decontamination efforts are well underway for a toxic Gowanus site, slated to house Brooklyn's first Whole Foods. But though the hole should be contaminant-free by April, the upscale grocery purveyor won't confirm its move to the neighborhood. “Everything I know is that Whole Foods is committed to building on that site,” said John Bogdanski, an environmental consultant for the store. “Still, there is always the option to sell the property.”
Bogdanski added that keeping the site will help the company, come tax time. “The [clean-up] tax credits pay over the course of 10 years,” he told the Brooklyn Paper. “If the site is sold, those tax credits move with the land [to the new owner].” But before neighborhood residents can graze at the store's expensive salad bar, it will have to find a partner—already it's been looking for two years.
Whole Foods began cleaning up the site—that has housed a lumber yard, an auto repair shop and an oil company—in 2005. The work that remains includes digging out contaminants, some lodged as deep as 14 feet, as well as three old oil tanks.
