Something was missing from the discussion. So said several Baltimore residents addressing the first working meeting of the group tasked by Mayor Brandon Scott with recommending where to move the popular trash facility currently located at 2840-42 Sisson Street.

“Seawall is AWOL from all these meetings,” complained Anthony Fortenos, referring to the private company that wants to acquire the city-owned garbage and recycling drop-off center located across the street from its planned mixed-use development in Remington.

“I don’t think we would be here if it were not for the fact that a large developer doesn’t want to have a trash dump in their viewshed,” declared Hampden resident Andrew VanStyn.

Seawall Development has another connection to the trash site controversy – it owns one of the top sites identified as an alternative location for the trash facility.

P. David Bramble’s MCB Real Estate owns another alternative location.

At Monday’s three-hour public meeting, administration officials failed to disclose these connections, even when asked directly about them.

“Do you have information on who is the current owner of the 400 West North Avenue site?” Task Force member Kevin Macartney asked Public Works Director Matthew Garbark.

“I’d have to get back to you on that. I’m not entirely sure. I don’t recall,” Garbark said.

“It was a couple of years [ago] when we were looking at that,” he continued, before Councilwoman Odette Ramos, chair of the Task Force, stepped in.

“We’ll get the solid answer for everyone,” she said.

The owner is MCBKA North Avenue, controlled by Bramble, the developer of Harborplace, Reservoir Square and other high-profile projects backed by Mayor Scott. MCB and two other investors purchased the former Norfolk Southern rail yard in 2019 for $2.95 million.

Another alternative site for the drop-off facility is at Huntingdon Avenue and 25th Street, Garbark said.

And who owns that property, another task force member asked.

Again no response from Garbark or Deputy Mayor Khalil Zaied. After an awkward pause, Ramos promised to find that out, too.

The owner is Storage Lot LLC, a Seawall entity that purchased the land in 2014 after a developer touting a grandiose plan called 25th Street Station failed to overcome limited finances and legal challenges.

Seawall came to an agreement with community groups not to pursue the previous owner’s big-box store/Walmart plans and banked the land for future use. The property is currently leased to the Maryland Mass Transit Administration and serves as a parking lot for MTA buses and related equipment.

Four Properties

The 25th Street site is centrally located, has a large open area and contains a modern building for use by DPW employees and supervisors – all factors that could make it a good site for a future drop-off center, Garbark told the task force.

Another unmentioned benefit is that it is alongside CSX’s Howard Street freight line, which could move trash off-site by rail, saving city streets from heavy truck traffic.

MTA leases the lot for $450,000-$500,000 a year and may not want to give up the site, Zaied said. He skirted around the property’s ownership, while Garbark stressed that, if available, the land would come at a premium price because “it is in a prominent focus location.”

Seawall has become the major player in North Baltimore’s Remington neighborhood. Headed by Thibault Manekin and his father Donald Manekin, it developed Miller’s Court on Howard Street, Remington Row and R. House on Remington Avenue. It is now seeking to build apartments and extensive office space at Sisson East, right across the street from the drop-off center.

The Brew asked Thibault Manekin last August if the company would consider working out “some kind of land swap,” offering the 25th Street site in exchange for the trash site on Sisson Street. We received no reply.

• BREW SPECIAL SERIES: Scott’s Sisson Street Trash Plan

The younger Manekin has been closely aligned with Mayor Scott, so much so that he over-contributed to the mayor’s reelection campaign, going over the $6,000 campaign limit in his own name, requiring him to transfer $500 over to his company’s name. Donald Manekin added $1,000 to the mayor’s coffers.

Seawall has submitted a proposal to the Baltimore Development Corporation (BDC) for a commercial project anchored by a grocery store at the city-owned drop-off site.

The BDC has not disclosed details of Seawall’s proposal, saying it contains proprietary information. But what followed was a surprise announcement by the mayor’s office last August – and a bill submitted to the City Council – that the 5.5 acres on which the drop-off center was located is “no longer needed for public use.”

The MCB Site

At that public meeting, the mayor’s chief of staff, Calvin Young, shocked his audience by saying the city would move the drop-off center to the Potts & Callahan storage yard at 2801 Falls Road.

The proposal stirred a backlash because the land is in a floodplain and located along a scenic stretch of the Jones Falls. The mayor, urged to come up with the better plan, responded by forming the task force.

At Monday’s meeting, the 13-member task force heard more strong criticism of the Potts & Callahan site – no speaker supported moving the trash facility there – and calls by a dozen citizens for a cleaned-up and beautified Jones Falls Valley.

Given the opposition to the Potts & Callahan site, Bramble’s parcel across the Jones Falls, between the Light Rail line and I-83, looms as another real possibility.

MCB and two other investors purchased the deactivated Norfolk Southern rail yard for $2.95 million in 2019 and have since used the 8.3-acre lot, best viewed from the 28th Street Bridge, as storage for industrial vehicles and for fill coming from the Druid Lake and Lake Ashburton water tank projects.

There is ample room for the drop-off center and decent access from North Avenue. The main drawback, according to Garbark, is that site is “behind,” or north of, MTA’s Light Rail Shops and, at one point, the road to the site crosses Light Rail storage tracks. (The main track runs along the east side of the property on an embankment above the Jones Falls.)

Whether Bramble and his associates might or might not sell the property – and at what price – is anyone’s guess. His company hasn’t disclosed its plans, and the Scott administration hasn’t yet disclosed his ownership to the task force charged with evaluating its merits.

Garbark cited three other potential sites for drop-off centers, describing each as hobbled by problems that make them distant candidates. They are:

• The DOT salt dome site at 560 West North Avenue – too small and potentially disrupted by construction of Amtrak’s future Frederick Douglass Tunnel.

• Recreation & Parks’ Camp Small on West Cold Spring Lane – too confined and too close to the Jones Falls.

• A city landfill at Edison Highway and East Madison Street – too far removed from the central city.

High Price Tag

Which leaves the current site at Sisson Street, centrally located and widely regarded as both the most used and best run trash station in the city.

Despite stating at one point that “it works perfectly for us,” meaning DPW, Garbark ran through a litany of drawbacks.

“It is not laid out very well,” “it is extraordinarily old,” “it has electrical issues, HVAC issues, heating issues,” and “it has very little office space for the supervisors,” he said, ending with the statement that it will most likely have to be torn down and rebuilt.

At what cost?

A “back-of-the-envelope” estimate of $40 million, he told the task force, leaving open the question of whether the Scott administration has any real intention of retaining or improving a popular municipal facility that’s in the sights of a developer’s ambitions.

“Don’t sell it”

At the hearing many expressed appreciation and even affection for the current site on Sisson, formally known as the Northwest Citizens Convenience Center, describing it as aptly named – a convenient place to take refuse from home renovation projects.

“The Sisson Street facility is awesome,” said Hampden resident Jake Tarr. “It is very clean and organized. and the people who work there are awesome – really friendly.”

“Leave well enough alone. Sisson Street is a beautiful facility”  – Charles Dugger.

Hampden’s Vanstyn also chastised city officials for even considering selling it, saying “a very bad tradition in this city to sell its patrimony to private developers.”

Retired schoolteacher and youth advocate Charles Dugger echoed Vanstyn’s warm feeling toward the current operation, pointing out that other city trash and recycling centers, like the Northwest Transfer Station on Reisterstown Road, were already operating at capacity.

“That’s a madhouse. Vehicles can be lined up all the way down Wabash Avenue waiting to get in there,” he told the task force, as people in the audience nodded in agreement. “If you wonder why illegal dumping persists, it’s because the city already doesn’t have enough existing facilities.”

His parting message: “Leave well enough alone. Sisson Street is a beautiful facility.”

• Fern Shen contributed to this story.