Shannon Selby, Vice President of Real Estate was honored to accept The RACER Trust’s 2025 RACER’s Edge Award on behalf of The Detroit Regional Partnership for the Verified Industrial Properties Program (VIP BY DRP) recently at the National Brownfields Conference 2025 in Chicago. The RACER’s Edge Award honors individuals and organizations whose redevelopment efforts have made a meaningful impact on former RACER sites or have significantly supported RACER’s mission.
Investments by the VIP Program into predevelopment work for RACER Trust sites have totaled over $600,000 over seven sites. The RACER’s Edge award recognized the VIP Program’s investment into the former GM properties to attract new users, investment, tax base and create jobs in the Detroit Region.
The award winning $17M industrial site readiness VIP by DRP program works closely with property owners, communities and prospective developers to streamline due diligence and provide critical information such as utilities, zoning, wetlands studies and highlight redevelopment-ready industrial properties. These program due diligence efforts can shave up to 6-12 months off a company’s timeline.
As background, The RACER Trust was established in 2011 to take on one of the largest environmental and economic redevelopment challenges in U.S. history, cleaning up and repurposing the industrial properties left behind after General Motors’ 2009 bankruptcy. Initially holding 83 locations in 13 states, RACER Trust became the largest environmental response and remediation trust in the nation. Its mission: remediate contamination, return land to productive use and create new economic opportunities in communities impacted by plant closures.
We believe that former GM sites hold both challenges and enormous opportunity. By working hand-in-hand with RACER Trust, the VIP BY DRP industrial site readiness program has been proud to not only attract investment but also demonstrate to the region and to the world that these sites are critical to the Detroit Region’s success.
For more information on Verified Industrial Properties, visit https://verifiedindustrialproperties.com/search-properties/.
