Hill Residents Urge the DC City Council to Step in and Address Mismanagement Issues Threatening the Future of Historic Eastern Market
Hill Residents Urge the DC City Council to Step in and Address Mismanagement Issues Threatening the Future of Historic Eastern Market
(Washington, D.C.) – Merchants and vendors at DC’s Eastern Market, the city’s longest continuously operating fresh food market, are experiencing serious management and operations problems under D.C. Department of General Services (DGS), resulting in dramatically declining sales, according to testimony at today’s City Council Committee on Facilities and Procurement’s Department of General Services oversight hearing.
Ellen Opper-Weiner, President of the revived not-for-profit Eastern Market Preservation and Development Corporation, (EMPDC) testified for the second year in a row that DGS not only has no expertise in managing a fresh food hall and farmers line, but also is doing so in violation of The Eastern Market Management and Regulation Act passed in 1998 (See Section 37-101 et. seq). DGS’s mismanagement of this historic market threatens its future if immediate action is not taken. She added, “DGS must immediately comply with the law by seeking a qualified not-for-profit association or corporation in accordance with the law.”
Another member of the EMPDC, Gregory L. Rohde, testified, by calling attention to the pleas of the merchants who have said that Eastern Market is in “grave risk of failure” and “on the brink of collapse due to neglect and mismanagement by DGS.” Rohde characterized the ongoing multitude of mismanagement issues as a “failure of leadership” by the city government. He criticized not only DGS but the Mayor and the City Council for denying leases to the merchants for more than 2 decades and managing the market illegally. Rohde said that the 21 year-long debate over leases with DGS “is a breakdown due to a combination of incompetence and cruel indifference on the part of the DC government at all levels.” He called upon the City Council to exercise its oversight responsibility and immediately bring the market management into compliance with DC law and grant at least short-term leases to the merchants.
Both the Eastern Market Merchants and the Tenants Council submitted written testimony for the oversight hearing at a recent meeting of the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee (EMCAC).
Eastern Market Merchants said, “Eastern Market as a fresh food hall is on the brink of collapse due to neglect and mismanagement from DGS. We need/require management with a basic comprehension of what it takes to run a fresh food market…”
The Tenants Council stated, “Succinctly put, the Merchants, Farmers, and Outdoor Vendors of Eastern Market request that DGS and thus Eastern Market Management begin running the BUSINESS of Eastern Market as a business that is separate from their own ownership of the building and other real estate transactions.”
Ellen Opper-Weiner added, “The major impediment to a successful fresh food market is the mismanagement of the market by the D.C. government. If left unchanged, the merchants will be driven out and the historic character of this important D.C. landmark will be lost.”
Opper-Weiner urged Capitol Hill residents, Market users, D.C. officials, Ward 6 Council member, other elected officials and community groups to work together to address these problems and take necessary steps to preserve the historic character of Eastern Market. The group has a petition in support of the Market at http://www.empreservation.org/sign-the-petition.
The EMPDC commissioned DC’s Eastern Market: Saving an Endangered Treasure that lays out the challenges to the existing Market and is available on the EMPDC website.
Click here for the written testimony of Ellen Opper-Weiner (2018 Oversight Hearing and the present hearing), and for Gregory L. Rohde’s testimony, please click here.
Watch the hearing on February 28, 2019 in room 412 on the DC Council’s website which starts at 10:00 am.