Gloversville will spend nearly $600,000 to clean up five former industrial sites — including the former Fownes Brothers Glove Co. building that burned in the spring — getting them ready for redevelopment.

The common council voted unanimously Tuesday to award five contracts, using money from a $1.5 million grant from the state Office of Homes and Community Renewal.

“It’s reallocating the awards” made Dec. 3 during a special session, Mayor Vincent DeSantis said, because of an error that he did not elaborate upon.

The money comes from a $1.5 million state grant the city planned to apply for to restore the former Fownes site before the April fire. The office normally limits such grants to $1 million from the $10 million fund and the city initially planned to seek $500,000, but the state agreed to increase this one to $1.5 million to prepare this site and several others.

The collection of work is meant to prepare brownfields for redevelopment. The challenge with brownfield development isn’t that they’re necessarily contaminated, but that nobody actually knows. Gloversville’s Brownfield Opportunity Area is meant to answer that question, making future development that much easier.

Once developers know whether the properties are contaminated and with what, they can develop plans and work the remediation costs into that and still be profitable. The state offers tax credits of up to 50% for remediation of the sites, and another 10% to 25% credit for materials in redevelopment, said Tom Seguljic, principal of HRP Associates of Albany, an engineering firm working with the Fulton County Center for Regional Growth, at a November meeting on brownfields.

The city is stacking grant programs on top of each other, overlaying a $10 million Downtown Revitalization Initiative, a Brownfield Opportunity Area and a Waterfront Revitalization Program. The idea is that once the brownfields are assessed, other grants can make redeveloping them easier and more attractive to developers.

The state Department of Agriculture and Markets sent Monday a reminder of upcoming changes in law for animal shelters and rescues.

The new law takes effect Dec. 15 and establishes mandatory licensing, enforceable care standards and consistent inspections for government-sponsored and not-for-profit shelters housing cats and dogs.

In a statement, department Commissioner Richard A. Ball acknowledged the extra burden the law may place on some shelters........

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