No money but I've got 15 acres of brownfield - how to captialize?

[Brandon Olsen]

I live in a little (40K pop) city in southern Ontario, Canada that has a ton of brownfield in the middle of the city with a massive old train station (we're a train city with contamination problems). I've had a vision for what we could do to revitalize the area and put together a team to pitch the idea to the organization that owns the majority of it. They loved the vision and agreed to give us time to put together a proposal on how to develop it.

Here's my concern: we're going to put together the project proposal, a developer is going to say thanks, and we're going to be the middle men that get squeezed out and not make anything on the project. I'm wondering how to do the development ourselves (or as a joint venture) and create that value ourselves. I don't want to just sell off part or all of the land to the developer because a) they'll likely wreck the vision (actually revitalization of the city) and b) want to make all the money. How do I, with no money (or experience - which to me is the bigger hurdle) pull off a project this size and not get squeezed out or bring a ton of value in getting it this far and only make a fraction of what I could have (not being greedy, I just don't want to get taken).

I have 15 acres of land to develop that has an old train station set way back on the property. We're looking at renovating 1/3 of the train station into a museum (the organization who owns the land) and 2/3 into leasable office and retail space. On the remainder of the land we want to develop as much residential (social housing, market rate apartments and high end apartments) and we want to develop some awesome public amenities (amphitheatres, beach volleyball courts etc.) and green spaces.

The exchange of value with the museum is that the project with cover the museum renovation and operating costs going forward (opex approx $350K/year). They're willing to give us the land in exchange for a paycheque. They don't want to develop the land, but they don't want to sell the land to your typical developer because they want it to be more than just a residential development. They want it to become 'the place to be'.

My ultimate question here is, how do I become the developer for the project with nothing other than the 'free land'?

Ps. I have a construction company working with me who isn't concerned about being able to remediate the land