The Baltimore Development Corporation last night blew off disclosing details of its below-the-radar involvement in the effort to move or close the Sisson Street trash drop-off center and sell the property to a private developer.

Representatives from the quasi-public agency were scheduled to appear before the Sisson Street Task Force’s virtual meeting, but they canceled at the last minute, according to task force chair, Councilwoman Odette Ramos.

“It is unfortunate but not surprising,” Ramos complained, noting that the BDC had initiated the legislation to sell the Sisson Street land in the first place, having received an expression of interest by Seawall Development to buy the five-acre lot now used to collect residential garbage and recycling.

“They are not transparent,” Ramos told fellow task force members. “I would think they would come to our meeting. They promised to be here. This is a problem, a huge problem.”

Deputy Mayor Khalil Zaied tried to blunt her anger by saying, “the door is not shut.” The decision not to appear was made by lower-level personnel, he explained, and he would talk to upper management and try to arrange a future appearance.

Last June, former city planning chief Otis Rolley was appointed president and CEO of the development organization.

• See The Brew’s detailed coverage of the trash facility controversy

According to a Beta-version website placed online yesterday by the task force, the Scott administration determined back in 2023 that “it would be consistent with both community desires and the needs of the city” to relocate the much-beloved drop-off center and “offer the land for sale and redevelopment.”

The administration announced last August that a Potts & Callahan maintenance yard below Sisson Street on Falls Road “met all of the criteria for a new site,” according to the website’s chronology.

But the plan to put a trash site in a floodplain in the Jones Falls Valley met with an avalanche of public opposition, forcing the mayor to appoint a 13-member task force to make recommendations about whether to keep, relocate or close the Sisson Street site.

At its last meeting, the task force heard about how much the public uses the facility to recycle and dispose of bulk trash. “People just love Sisson Street,” said Public Works Superintendent Rodney Bennett.

In a straw poll, the group voted unanimously to take the Potts & Callahan site off the table as it prepares its recommendations to Scott.

Options Narrow

Last night the group heard Greater Remington Improvement Association’s Samantha Horn (who doubles as vice chair of the task force) proclaim that the drop-off center is incompatible with the community’s 2018 neighborhood plan.

“We do not want this is in our neighborhood anymore” she said, adding that GRIA also opposes the nearby 25th Street and Huntingdon Avenue site for a new trash center.

Ramos noted that Councilman James Torrence opposes the 400 West North Avenue site, saying it is near Reservoir Hill, which the mayor has said is off-limits as a historically disinvested Black community.

And Councilman Jermaine Jones has declared that a location at Monument Street and Edison Highway in East Baltimore is also off the table because, Ramos said last night, “there is an awesome, exciting development happening there” that she could not publicly disclose.

That leaves a six-acre parking lot on High Street, between Hillen and Centre streets not far from City Hall, as a possible site. The property is owned by Fallsway Properties, a New Jersey-based company.

Ramos said the task force will meet again next Monday and visit potential sites on January 10, including the city’s expanding Bowley’s Lane trash facility.

Given the opposition to alternative sites, the group’s website notes that there is “a healthy debate as to whether the Sisson Street site should remain where it is or simply close without reopening elsewhere.”