Businesses locating in the zone and employing zone residents receive tax benefits. The cities of Flint and Muskegon and also Lake County have been designated as enterprise communities. This program has the same goals as empowerment zones but helps smaller cities and some economically depressed rural areas as well. The State of Michigan has also initiated several programs for urban revitalization. Brownfield Redevelopment Brownfields are a special problem.
Current law makes brownfield owners pay for cleanup only if they caused the contamination.
The REUS Action Team helps them understand the liability protections, flexible cleanup standards, and funding possibilities in Michigan's cleanup program. In 1996 the legislature appropriated new funding for brownfield redevelopment. Moreover, the trends toward declining population and poverty concentration in central urban areas have continued virtually unabated since the 1960s. Urban revitalization is expensive and controversial. Renaissance zone supporters cite figures from the Michigan Jobs Commission that some 43 business enterprises, creating an estimated 4,000 new jobs, already have been established in renaissance zones.