Is there anything an individual or community can do to help this process along? I'm imaging either some kind of environmental bounty program that I and my neighbors could contribute to that if the property gets properly remediated the property owner could claim; or pressuring local jurisdictions to get involved in either funding or performing some/all of the remediation.
I'm an environmental consultant. The short answer is almost certainly not, but maybe. The long answer is this site is what is commonly called a brownfield. Typically, a brownfield is when the company that caused the problem and the landowner who is also responsible for the problem are gone. Dead, bankrupt, dissolved, whatever. So it just sits there vacant because nobody wants the financial liability. There are bazillions of these things across the country.
The faint ray of hope is that there are grants on the federal and state levels to help redevelop these things into something other than ugly eyesores. In order to get the grants you typically need to show up with a boatload of your own money, and they give you a little sweetener.
Good end uses for brownfields can be things like city parks or other community spaces. So, if the city was going to build a park anyway....who knows? Might be a fit there.
https://www.tceq.texas.gov/remediation/bsa/bsa.htmlOne example of brownfield redevelopment is Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle. It is a big green space right in downtown. But it took a lot of moving parts to get it come together. First, there was a huge amount of private raised, and then the City of Seattle and Seattle Art Museum also partnered with the private groups. A lot of people had to agree with the same goal, to put it another way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Sculpture_ParkSo can be done, but there are a lot of moving parts that have to align. One of those parts is starting with a nice big stack of money.
Edit: To be clear, you can also get brownfield grants for private redevelopment. The OP sounded like he wanted a community-based solution so that's why I mentioned a park. But the end result could be say, an office park too.