The former Sunshine Cleaners building sat vacant for 15 years on the west side of downtown Oklahoma City. But its iconic sign, beautiful architecture and promising location amid other new developments made it an ideal candidate for a modern renovation.

"Since we were purchasing an old cleaners and laundry facility, we knew we needed to engage with the City's brownfields program," said David Wanzer with the Pivot Project development group.

Working with the City's experts, the Phase I and Phase II ESA efforts revealed no contamination -- a pleasant surprise to the Pivot Project. 

"We had assumed that dry cleaning had been done on this site. it turns out it had only been used as a commercial laundry facility," said Wanzer.

Aided by the clean bill of environmental health produced by the grant-funded brownfields assessment, Wanzer and his team transformed the vacant but important building into a gleaming new example of urban redevelopment that made new jobs possible.

"The Sunshine building has now been lovingly restored, including its iconic, three-sided, rooftop neon sign. It's an anchor on the west side of downtown OKC," said Wanzer. "A new brewery and taproom, Stonecloud Brewing Company, occupies the majority of the building with commercial office space on the second floor. The brewery has created over a dozen new jobs and added to the City's tax base."