Rethinking how Eastern Market is managed and administered by the City

Courtland Milloy writes a negative column about how Eastern Market was trashy and smelly and full of rats and that the fire was preordained. See "A Fire That Could Have Been Foretold."

The thing he refers to is something that I joke about, that the city's dominant property management strategy is demolition by neglect. At least over the last 30 years, the city hasn't done such a great job--especially the School System--with their stewardship of these public assets. Remember, the city's property portfolio is held in trust by the City Government for the residents of the City of Washington. Agencies tend to not think that way...

Anyway, I wrote a long memo last fall about how the way the city manages and funds cultural resources and assets needs to be reconsidered.

In this memo, I suggested that Eastern Market is a cultural resource and economic development and revitalization engine. It is not merely a building nominally managed under the jurisdiction of the Office of Property Management.

I suggested that public and farmers markets should be housed under a larger cultural resources division. This unit would include the Florida Market, the Maine Avenue seafood market, and the various farmers markets sponsored by various groups and located around the city's neighborhoods and business districts.

The memo is reprinted in this blog entry, "Cultural resources planning in DC: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king."
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Off to the second day of a conference on farmers markets. That's why I am not blogging, reading the local newspapers (in part because the Examiner really does a crappy job of distributing to Brookland--about 3-4 times in the last two weeks have papers actually been delivered to the racks on 12th Street NE in Brookland), or doing email.