RACER Trust Receives Final Approval of Corrective Action Plan, Signaling End of Active Cleanup for Property in Kansas City, Kan.

RACER Trust today announced that it has received final approval of the Corrective Action Plan (CAP) from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) for the former RACER property in the Fairfax district of Kansas City.

This approval represents the start of the final phase of the project. RACER Trust will now move forward with the selected remedy chosen in the Agency Decision Statement (ADS) published by KDHE.

RACER Trust has completed an investigation program and taken remedial steps that included excavation and management of impacted soils. This KDHE approval accepts corrective measures completed to date, appropriate use restrictions and requires on-going monitoring of site conditions.

Since its formation in 2011, RACER Trust has worked under the oversight of the KDHE to complete necessary cleanup activities at the site, a former General Motors vehicle assembly plant that ceased operations decades earlier. RACER’s cleanup activities commenced in 2011 and continued even after it sold the property in 2013 to Fairfax74 LLC, which is building a new multi-tenant industrial park on the site.

“Our cleanup team, led by Cleanup Manager Bob Hare, worked diligently and cooperatively with KDHE to implement and execute an effective cleanup that met the state’s remedial standards. We are pleased that the state has approved our final corrective measures plan for the site,” said Elliott P. Laws, of EPLET, LLC, administrative trustee of RACER Trust. “The sale, redevelopment and remediation of the Fairfax property is illustrative of the collaborative approach RACER takes to property transactions, with the goal of coordinating cleanup and redevelopment concurrently to allow for the shortest possible build times.”

RACER Trust, working under the oversight of the KDHE, will maintain responsibility for monitoring the limited remaining conditions that resulted from previous uses of the property. 

About RACER Trust: RACER (Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response) Trust was created to clean up and position for redevelopment properties and other facilities owned by the former General Motors Corp. before its 2009 bankruptcy. RACER is one of the largest holders of industrial property in the United States, and when it was formed was the largest environmental response and remediation trust in U.S. history. When the Trust was formed, it owned properties at 89 locations in 14 states, principally in the Midwest and Northeast. The Trust was created by a settlement agreement in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court between the U.S. Government, the 14 states where the former GM properties are located, and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, which owns land adjoining one of the properties in Upstate New York. For more information, please visit our website: www.racertrust.org.