Businesses located in Baltimore’s Jones Falls Valley – restaurants, a bicycle store and historic mills converted to eateries, shops and apartments – have sent a letter of protest to Mayor Brandon Scott denouncing his proposal to put a city trash facility in their midst.

“There has been no consultation with any of the businesses or owners of property along this Jones Falls corridor who have invested tens of millions of dollars to restore historic mill buildings and bring new energy there,” says the letter, signed by nine businesses and written by David F. Tufaro, whose Terra Nova Ventures company developed Whitehall Mill and Mill No. 1.

“There has been no community engagement whatsoever. Our elected officials and city agencies have avoided communicating with us,” wrote Tufaro, who sent the letter yesterday, copying City Council members Odette Ramos and Jermaine Jones, Council President Zeke Cohen, Scott’s chief of staff Calvin Young and other officials.

“The undersigned business and property owners strenuously oppose plans to relocate the city’s trash site from Sisson Street to Falls Road,” Tufaro wrote. “If a suitable alternative site for the current city recycling center on Sisson cannot be found, then it should remain where it is.”

The statement is signed by Baltimore Bicycle Works, Birroteca, Cosima, Meadow Mill, Mill Center, Mill No. 1, True Chesapeake Oyster Co. and Whitehall Mill.

“This is not going to happen,”  Tufaro said, speaking with The Brew earlier today. “If it comes to it – and I hope it doesn’t – we will sue.”

He said he was heading to a meeting with the most prominent group so far opposing the mayor’s plans, Friends of the Jones Falls.

The Friends group’s green-and-white “Don’t Trash the Falls” fliers can be seen on trees and utility poles all up and down Falls Road. (They include links to information about how to lobby against the proposal.)

Reversing Progress

Criticism from the area’s business sector is the latest fallout from the Scott administration’s August 11 surprise announcement that it planned to sell the Northwest Citizen Drop-off Center at 2840-2842 Sisson Street and establish a new trash station at the Potts & Callahan storage yard at 2801 Falls Road.

Since then, a hornet’s nest of opposition has been buzzing around the idea of using land in the floodplain along the Jones Falls Trail and bikeway as a drop-off site for garbage, bulk trash and household hazardous waste.

For years, grassroots groups, nonprofits, urban planners and local colleges have collaborated on strategic plans and ambitious initiatives to make the area along the waterway a linear urban park celebrating nature and the valley’s rich history.

They reacted with horror to the administration’s proposal, saying it would undo their efforts.

Tufaro said businesses are likewise furious.

“You’ve got 150-year-old mills that go back to the days of the clipper ships, and you’re going to put garbage there?” he said. “There are thriving businesses in the corridor, and there’s so much potential to do more, to make the Jones Falls Valley an environmental gem and a place to showcase America’s industrial history.”

The city’s plan to close off Falls Road at Mill No. 1, eliminating vehicular through traffic, would be devastating for local businesses and a headache for the growing number of residents in the valley, Tufaro said. “It just adds insult to injury.”

Chiding the City and Seawall

Never one to mince words, Tufaro chided the Scott administration (“they have no appreciation for this incredible asset”) and blasted a fellow developer for his role in the plan.

He had withering words for Thibault Manekin, who has recently sought to distance himself from the process of relocating the Sisson Street facility.

Manekin’s Seawall company has plans for a mixed-use development on property it owns on the east side of Sisson Street. It has sought for years to acquire the municipal trash facility on the west side of the road.

“This is all about Thibault. He told me, ‘I have nothing to do with this,” Tufaro said. “I said ‘Give me a break. You’re the major voice here. You’re the fair-haired boy.’”

Part of a prominent business family, Manekin and his father, Donald Manekin, have made Seawall into the dominant player in Remington, developing R. House and Remington Row, and snagged other big projects in Baltimore along the way, such as the overhaul of Lexington Market.

Manekin has not responded to a request for comment from The Brew.

“Nobody likes this but people in smoke-filled rooms”  – David Tufaro.

“I told him, ‘You have said this thing [the Sisson refuse drop-off facility] is an eyesore. So now you want to put the eyesore down in the valley?” Tufaro continued.

Tufaro said he is determined to make his redevelopment of historic factory buildings an the valley work, including Whitehall Market, which has struggled.

“I’m losing money on it, but I’m not going to give up because I believe in that area,” he said. “I’m in it for the long haul.”

Meanwhile, he says he’s working hard to stop the trash site plan from going forward.

“Nobody likes this but people in smoke-filled rooms.”