Dear Mayor Wilson and Members of the City Council: August 15th, 2025
We are the independent business owners of the Brooklyn Business Association, operating in and around the intersection of SE Milwaukie Avenue and SE Powell Boulevard. We rely on a neighborhood where customers feel safe walking to our doors, employees can come and go as needed, and sidewalks and streets are clear for a variety of uses. We write to make two requests:
- Use the City’s full authority and influence to prevent the siting and opening of the proposed bottle redemption operation at 1109 SE Brooklyn Street. The site would be funded primarily by the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative (OBRC) and operated by Ground Score Association, which would relocate its current outdoor operation at SE MLK and SE Morrison to this location.
- Direct your staff to convene OBRC, Ground Score, grocery retailers, and neighborhood representatives to identify an alternative site that does not place patrons and pedestrians on Portland’s most dangerous street.
We want to be clear from the outset about where we stand. We are pro-people, pro-safety, and pro-livability, and we mean that for everyone: the residents and workers of this neighborhood, the students who pass through it, and the canners who depend on redemption income to make ends meet. We are not asking the City to choose between compassion and safety. We are asking for a solution that provides both, because this proposal delivers neither.
Our concerns fall into three areas.
1. The location is unsafe.
Proponents estimate this site will draw hundreds of canners daily, and likely more following the July 31, 2026 closure of OBRC’s North Portland redemption center near Delta Park, which had been serving 800 canners a day. With almost no on-site parking, most patrons will arrive on foot, by bicycle, or by transit, moving large bags and carts of containers through one of the city’s most dangerous intersections.
Portland’s own Vision Zero data identifies Powell Boulevard as the city’s most dangerous street for pedestrian deaths and serious injuries, and its third most dangerous for cyclists. The Milwaukie/Powell intersection ranks among Portland’s 20 least-safe intersections for pedestrians. Cleveland High School students use a TriMet shelter directly across the street, and a few blocks north on Milwaukie Avenue is a rail crossing where several pedestrians have recently been struck and killed. Adding hundreds of daily foot and cart trips to this corridor puts the very people this project is meant to serve directly in harm’s way.
2. Oversight, partners, and funding have all walked away. Only the risks remain.
Our confidence that there will be a successful outcome is at an all time low. The timeline tells the story:
- August 2025: OBRC and grocery retailers first reveal the site to neighbors on the Clinton Triangle Oversight Committee, presenting it as a decision already made, with opening planned for that fall.
- October 2025: At a public meeting, the site is described as a “dream location.” Neighbors are assured it will be a state-permitted, OLCC-regulated Alternative Access Redemption Center (AARC) under SB 992, serving roughly 300 canners a day, capped at 350 containers per person per day, and processing 30 million containers annually.
- November 2025: The site is finally surveyed for environmental hazards, revealing multiple leaking underground storage tanks. Though the tanks and more than 40 tons of contaminated soil have since been removed, as of August 10, 2026 the state has still not certified the site as clean.
- Spring 2026: The grocers withdraw from the project. OBRC then announces it will not seek AARC status or OLCC oversight and will instead simply relocate the People’s Depot. The site would no longer be a “redemption center” as defined by state law, and daily per-person container limits would no longer apply.
- July 31, 2026: OBRC closes its Delta Park redemption center after years of neighborhood complaints about litter, camping, property crime, and drug activity. Increased traffic from displaced canners is already visible at the People’s Depot’s current site, and it will follow the operation to SE Brooklyn Street.
3. The community protections have collapsed.
In your May 20 letter to OBRC’s CEO, Mayor Wilson, you shared that as the primary funder, OBRC should hold the responsibility for safe, well-run facilities, and for maintaining open, collaborative, and productive relationships with neighboring residents and businesses, and you strongly urged OBRC to sign a Good Neighbor Agreement (GNA) with the surrounding community.
OBRC representatives have since told us directly that they will not sign a GNA, and have not participated in any discussions. Nearly three months on, we understand OBRC has not made any commitments to uphold these expectations and has yet to formally respond to your letter at all. The building’s prospective owner has likewise made no GNA commitment. That leaves Ground Score, a respected nonprofit with no tangible assets and dependent on OBRC funding for its own payroll, as the only prospective signatory. Asking Ground Score to carry sole accountability lets OBRC off the hook and places an unfair burden on a nonprofit that has been offered no alternative site.
The financial commitment has followed the same pattern. When this was to be a state-regulated AARC, OBRC and the grocers pledged $500,000 per year to the City for ten years, a total of $5 million. That pledge has since been reduced to $200,000 for a single year: 4 percent of the original commitment.
Our request
Many canners are economically distressed Portlanders working honorably to make ends meet, and we respect Ground Score’s mission. Precisely because we care about these neighbors, we cannot support a plan that concentrates hundreds of vulnerable people at a hazardous intersection with no binding community protections. Experience at Portland’s major redemption sites (Delta Park, NE 122nd and Glisan, and the People’s Depot) shows that the blocks around immediate-cash redemption sites consistently suffer litter, camping, property crime, and open drug activity. These are pressures the City is less equipped than ever to absorb amid cuts to police and behavioral health services. There are also larger questions about the Bottle Bill’s future that deserve serious discussion when the 2027 Legislature convenes.
For these reasons, we urge you to use the City’s authority and influence to stop this project at this location, and if necessary, convene all affected parties, including neighbors, businesses, OBRC, grocers, Ground Score, and canners themselves, to find a solution that is safe, sustainable, and livable for everyone. We would welcome the opportunity to meet with you or your staff at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely,
Matt McComas, President
Melaney Dittler, Vice President
CC: Brooklyn Business Association Board