In August, we asked you to share opposition to plans to relocate the Sisson Street Convenience Center to the Jones Falls Valley.
As a result of your advocacy, the Sisson Street Task Force was formed, and Bikemore was asked to join to advise on traffic safety and represent the interests of bicyclists and pedestrians.
In a November task force meeting, Bikemore Executive Director Jed Weeks motioned to remove the Falls Road site from consideration, and the task force unanimously voted in favor of that motion.
While we expect the mayor to accept the recommendations of the task force, this vote was only advisory. And even if the city never planned to relocate to the Falls Road location, there was still a huge risk: the sites are zoned industrial and owned by Potts & Callahan. In theory, nothing could prevent them from selling or leasing the property to another industrial use, including a private waste facility.
Today, Seawall Development announced that they are under contract on 2801 and 2701 Falls Road, both of the active Potts & Callahan industrial sites.
If their purchase is successful, Seawall Development has committed to advocates and neighbors, including Bikemore, Blue Water Baltimore, Friends of the Jones Falls, and the Greater Remington Improvement Association that they will prevent industrial uses on these sites, and instead work collaboratively with us to re-imagine both sites to meet the desires of Baltimoreans to see the Jones Falls Valley realized as a world-class linear park, flanked by walkable, mixed use development in Remington.
Challenges to protecting these sites remain. The financial viability of this sale is likely predicated on the ability to re-develop the existing Sisson Street Convenience Center, as connectivity between Remington and the Jones Falls Valley between the two sites would only be possible through that re-development. The industrial zoning is still in place, and a comprehensive rezoning of both the Falls Road and Sisson Street sites to allow appropriate human scale redevelopment (and restrict uses like big box stores and parking lots from the Sisson Street sites) would likely be necessary.
If the Sisson Street Task Force moves toward Option 2, the phased closure of Sisson Street Convenience Center, Bikemore will advocate for the report to include these recommendations.
If realized, these efforts would take the largest remaining industrial uses in the lower Jones Falls Valley off the table permanently, protect the site from a potential future convenience center, eliminate dumping and runoff concerns from the existing Sisson Street facility, and facilitate a much stronger connection between communities and the Jones Falls Valley.
Seawall Development will be hosting public visioning sessions for Baltimoreans to share what they’d like to see these sites become, and we will share that information as it becomes available.