The Detroit Regional Partnership honored Shannon Selby, Vice President of Real Estate, was recognized with the Linda Garczynski Brownfields Person of the Year Award at the Phoenix Awards during the 2025 National Brownfields Training Conference in Chicago.
This prestigious honor recognizes an outstanding brownfield leader who has recently championed brownfield cleanup and redevelopment to promote and enhance significant community revitalization.
At the helm of the Detroit Regional Partnership’s signature Verified Industrial Properties (VIP) program, Shannon leads a transformative initiative aimed at revitalizing underused industrial land throughout the 11-county Detroit region. Under her leadership, the VIP program has grown to an over $17 million program and supported preparation of more than 97 job-ready sites, approximately one-third of which are brownfields, for redevelopment. These efforts include site assessment reports, onsite investigation reports and site activation plans for developers and property owners.
Shannon’s strategic leadership resulted in the inclusion of over 2,000 acres of brownfield sites in the VIP program. High-impact projects include the redevelopment of the iconic former Buick City Site in Flint (now the Flint Commerce Center), 200 Mills Street in Ecorse and the former McLouth Steel Site. Her work has accelerated timelines for development, reduced due diligence costs and brought national attention to the opportunities these sites offer.
Today, 33 brownfield sites within the VIP program are under development, supported by more than $1.7M in investment from the program. Shannon has played a critical role in positioning brownfields for redevelopment and helping end users take advantage of these sites’ many benefits – from established utility connections to their strategic placement in areas close to transportation infrastructure, housing and talent. Her partnerships with national developers like Ashley Capital, Northpoint Development, and Racer Trust have positioned the Detroit region as a leader in industrial redevelopment and sustainable growth.
The DRP team is incredibly proud of the work Shannon and her team have done to elevate brownfield redevelopment in our region. This award reflects not only her vision and dedication, but the tangible progress we’re seeing in communities across Southeast Michigan.
For more about the Verified Industrial Properties program and DRP’s work in brownfield redevelopment, visit https://verifiedindustrialproperties.com/search-properties/
Selby was also honored with 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.
