This story is the second in a two-part series about the town of Capitol Heights’ handling of its storage lot on Opus Avenue. Read the first story here.
Ernest and Pamela Buchanan have lived in their home in Capitol Heights since 1978. The couple raised four children there—all now adults. It’s a quiet street, not too far from the metro station, and lined with tidy houses and neat lawns.
Few would expect to find the Buchanans’ across-the-street neighbor on Opus Avenue: a 26,000-square-foot storage lot housing construction vehicles, big metal equipment and an old Hummer. The town of Capitol Heights owns the property, and has used it this way since before the Buchanans first moved in over 45 years ago.
“With the town hall, I’m sure the people on the [council], or whoever looks at all of this—they wouldn’t want that in their neighborhood,” Pamela Buchanan said. “So why have it in our neighborhood? That’s the bottom line.”
Until recently, the lot contained hundreds of used plastic garbage bins, several old mattresses and some scattered wood scraps and tires. Capitol Heights had dumped 1,500 used garbage bins—still dirty—into the lot in May 2023, after switching to a new trash service provider. The town finally cleared the last of the bins and other junk by May 16, 2024.
Some of the trash cans had been taken away throughout the year, but several neighbors expressed frustration with the pace of their removal. Opus Avenue residents said Capitol Heights had not reached out to them with a heads-up that the trash bins were coming or a timeline for how long it might take to remove them.
More than 100 garbage cans still sat there on April 16, when Informer reporters visited Opus Avenue, spoke to neighbors and dropped by the town administrative building to ask about property records. Dezirae Montgomery, a municipal employee in charge of permits and licensing, said that the county would have the relevant records.
Prince George’s County zoning maps list the Opus Avenue facility as residential. The county’s zoning ordinance prohibits such properties from being used as a “junkyard” or for any kind of “outdoor storage,” including “storage of wrecked or abandoned vehicles or parts.”
Within a week of the Informer’s inquiry, the town began removing the remaining garbage cans more quickly, a homeowner who lives next door said. At the time of press on May 28, the lot still contained construction and transportation vehicles, some pieces of equipment and an old Hummer.
Capitol Heights Mayor Linda Monroe said in a statement that the trash bins should have been retrieved by the former trash company, Bates Trucking and Trash Removal, but weren’t.
“The Town is diligently removing wheels from each bin prior to loading on small vehicles that are not equipped to transport such removals to an approved dumping area,” Monroe wrote in an email a week before the last bins were cleared out. “It’s a tedious but steady process.”
The mayor and other town officials repeatedly declined to answer specific questions about the situation, including why Bates Trucking did not take away the bins and why the town did not hire another company to do so.
Town Official: The Less We Share Now, ‘The Less We Have to Explain Later‘
A representative from Bates Trucking said she could not comment on anything related to the former contract with Capitol Heights because the two parties were “in litigation.” In her email, Mayor Monroe had also written “some of the issues are legal and I’m unable to share.”
But Robert Dashiell, the attorney representing Bates Trucking, said in a phone call that he was not aware of any litigation, prior or ongoing, between his client and the town of Capitol Heights. A case search within the Maryland Judiciary’s records did not show any open or closed cases involving Bates Trucking.
Dashiell also said he believed the trash bins to still be Bates Trucking’s property and that he thought they had already been “destroyed or disposed of” months prior.
“I didn’t even know the cans still existed,” he said. “Why [didn’t] somebody just write a letter to Bates saying, ‘here are the cans, please come get them?’”
In her statement, Monroe directed further questions to Joy Ren, Capitol Heights’ town administrator. But Ren’s office declined to schedule an interview or provide written comments, as did Emory Gibson, the town’s public works director.
Reached by phone, Capitol Heights council member Faith Ford also directed The Informer to speak with Ren. Ford said she and other members of the elected council were “unable” to speak to members of the press, per the town’s “protocols.”
Most calls, and all emails, to Ren’s office went unanswered. During a visit to the municipal building, an Informer reporter was told that the administrator was in the office but would not speak to her any time that day.
Montgomery did answer one call to the office on May 15, just a few days before the last bins were removed. She said the town was “actively working on making the appearance of the lot more appealing” and “clearing out the land so that it is not necessarily an eyesore.”
But Montgomery also said the town had not determined what it would do with the property going forward, and would not rule out the possibility of continuing to use it as a storage facility.
“We don’t have anything solid,” Montgomery said. The fewer details the office shared with the Informer and the public about tentative plans or discussions, she said, “the less we have to explain later.”
Lots Left Unexplained
On May 17, the day after the town removed the last trash cans, Mayor Monroe spoke at a press conference to celebrate upcoming development around the Capitol Heights metro station.
Asked about future plans for the Opus Avenue storage facility less than a mile away, Monroe pointed out that the town has almost 100 vacant lots it is “trying to address.” She mentioned ownership transfers as part of that process, but the Opus Avenue facility—unlike many vacant lots—is already owned by Capitol Heights.
“Money is tight in this town,” Monroe said. “We tried to give you all the information that you need. We started out [with] a lot of dirty trash cans, and we have addressed that.”
The mayor declined to answer follow-up questions.
A homeowner who lives next door to the storage lot, Dana Torres*, said that Capitol Heights officials never provided her with an estimate for how long it would take to remove the pile of trash cans. Torres is using a pseudonym because of concerns about how speaking out could affect her future job options if employers search online for her name.
Her property sits adjacent to the storage lot, separated only by a chain link fence. After the garbage cans were placed in it, Torres said, she began having serious, expensive groundhog issues she had never experienced in the 10 years she had lived in the home. The fourth-generation D.C. native began reaching out to town and county officials shortly after the pile of trash cans appeared in May 2023.
She attended a virtual town meeting and reached out to Mayor Monroe, the Capitol Heights administrator’s office, and town council members Victor James Sr. and Ronald Williams Sr.
Emails to the county executive’s office and to Kristal Oriadha, her county council representative, also did not yield results. Oriadha’s chief of staff, Tiffany Hannon, said her office hadn’t “heard anything about this” and that Oriadha’s constituent services team had experienced turnover in the last year. Torres had reached out to the council member last August.
Early on, Torres filed a 311 report with Prince George’s County. The county told her that the problem had to be solved by Capitol Heights, since the municipality owned the storage lot.
“I reached out to pretty much everyone I could think of,” Torres said. “It really led to an empty dead end.”
The town did not proactively get in touch with Opus Avenue residents before or after the placement of the garbage cans, several neighbors confirmed.
“It feels like, to be honest, my representatives don’t care about me,” Torres said.
Torres did get one call back from the town administration in early June of last year. She didn’t remember exactly who she spoke to, but the phone number in her records matches the cell number listed on Emory Gibson’s official business card as public works director. Torres said the official on the line argued with her that the facility was a “storage lot” and not a “junkyard.”
“We got into a discussion about the semantics,” Torres recalled. “He was very condescending… And either way, if it’s a storage lot, or a junkyard—it does not belong in a residential neighborhood.”
Enforcement Responsibility is Legally Complicated
The lot has been used for storage since the 1970s, but that usage seems to contradict the rules set out in Prince George’s County’s zoning ordinance today.
Hilary Covington, a representative from the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission (MNCPPC), said that she couldn’t comment on the specific plot on Opus Avenue but that generally outdoor storage isn’t permitted on land zoned for residential use.
“Storing anything, for the most part, would be prohibited,” Covington said.
However, Capitol Heights is an incorporated town, which gives the municipality certain privileges and responsibilities separate from Prince George’s County. Capitol Heights’ zoning map is crafted by MNCPPC, like most of the county. But the town has its own Property Standards Authority that is in charge of enforcement.
Avis Thomas-Lester, a representative from Prince George’s County Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement (DPIE) said that the agency did conduct an inspection at the Opus Avenue lot in response to a 311 complaint in June 2023, when all 1500 garbage cans were still there and had not yet been cleaned.
“An inspector was sent to survey the property,” Thomas-Lester wrote in an emailed statement. “The complaint was referred to the town’s code enforcement official by a DPIE supervisor via email and phone call. There could be no determination made that the property violated zoning code because the designated use could not be determined.”
It’s unclear what further communication the county agency had with Capitol Heights’ Property Standards Authority after that first inspection. Thomas-Lester did not respond to follow-up questions about who would be responsible for determining a property’s “designated use” if not DPIE, or about any agreements between DPIE and Capitol Heights regarding enforcement duties.
On its website, Capitol Heights’ list of items that cannot be stored outside residences includes “junk, auto parts, appliances, furniture, building materials [and] tires” as well as “inoperable vehicles.”
To sum it all up: MNCPPC designates the plot of land on Opus Avenue, which Capitol Heights owns and uses as a storage facility, as residential. Both the Prince George’s County ordinance and Capitol Heights’ standards include rules against storing junk outdoors on such properties. But when the county’s enforcement agency came out to inspect the Opus Avenue lot, it could not declare a violation and instead referred the complaint to a Capitol Heights official.
The garbage bins remained in the lot for another 11 months after that inspector’s visit, and the town will not say if it plans to continue using the space for outdoor storage.
The phone number listed online for the Capitol Heights Ethics Commission was out of service when the Informer tried to get in touch. The commission’s chair, Redell Napper Sr., did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Residents Want to See Something Better
One major issue with the storage lot comes up over and over again, voiced by residents and town officials alike: it just looks bad.
“It was the first thing I noticed when I first moved in here—obviously it wasn’t pretty to look at,” said 23-year-old Valmori Rojas, whose family moved into the house right next to the storage facility in early April. The home had been on the market since 2018, property records show.
A tall wooden fence at the front of the lot is meant to hide the contents from passersby on the road, but when The Informer visited in April, the fence had several holes and missing planks. In early May, when the town was quickly removing the trash cans, the holes were covered by nailed-on wooden boards and draped plastic tarp.
“That plastic and wood looks terrible on the gate,” Torres said. “That looks so tacky—if we were to do that [on individually-owned properties] that would be an issue.”
By the end of the month, the plastic tarp was gone, though the patchwork of wooden boards remained. Moreover, Capitol Heights had addressed the biggest aesthetic problem residents cited: the town took away the bright green trash cans and most other bulk junk items—such as tires and old, unwrapped mattresses—that it had placed there.
“I am so grateful,” Torres said. “At least that’s one thing down. I can sit on my porch and not look at trash.”
But the lot still houses big pieces of metal equipment, construction vehicles and an old Hummer (the last of which has been there for years, Torres said).
The Buchanans said that Opus Avenue residents had expressed concerns to the town about the storage lot’s appearance, and the vermin the facility attracted, long before the addition of the garbage bins.
“Myself and neighbors have brought it to their attention over the years and nothing was really done,” Ernest Buchanan said. “There were nice words said about ‘we’re going to look into it,’ but nothing has really taken place.”
Monroe wrote in her statement that the town did include potential changes to the Opus Avenue lot as part of a larger plan for development in Capitol Heights. But the mayor and other town officials would not answer questions about what those changes could look like or what opportunities residents would have to contribute their input.
“The Town is in the process of making many advancements to our community that will include several different economic development projects,” the mayor wrote. “Currently, the matter of the storage lot is tentative and is a smaller part of the entire project, and as such we will refrain from sharing additional details at this time.”
Torres, the Buchanans and several other Opus Avenue neighbors all said they wanted to see the storage facility transformed into a clean and accessible public space instead. The neighborhood they envisioned for themselves might include a park, a community garden, a playground, a gym.
Pamela Buchanan even proposed a small skatepark for youth, among other options.
“Give the kids a playground. I don’t mind listening to the kids laughing and bantering in the yard… Or a little park—there’s a lot of older people who could come and sit,” she said. “Anything besides a junkyard, a quote-unquote ‘storage lot.’”
This story has been updated to include comment from the Prince George’s County Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement.
Misspelling CAPITOL HEIGHTS in the article headline goes crazy!