Eastern Market post-fire renovation and road improvements: Adding a mid-block crosswalk at the entrance on 7th Street SE

Eastern Market post-fire renovation and road improvements: Adding a mid-block crosswak at the entrance on 7th Street SE
Originally uploaded by rllayman

Eastern Market is reopening on June 26th. In the meantime, building construction workers, logistics coordinators, and road construction workers are working feverishly to ensure that the building will in fact open as scheduled.

One of the things that I didn't realize was being done as part of the resurfacing of 7th Street SE in front of the Market is the addition of a mid-block crosswalk. DDOT isn't always in favor of this kind of pedestrian oriented street improvement, so it's good to see.

The merchants, both of the interior of Eastern Market, and the businesses on 7th Street seem to be vociferously against closing 7th Street SE on the weekends.

It's a continuous continuing battle. They see this as negatively impacting their business, due to the loss of parking spaces. It's discussed in the Hill Rag article, "Permanent Closing of 7th Street Challenged: Commuters Fill Promised Parking at Hine."

However, heretofore, there has never been any parking enforcement on Saturdays on 7th Street SE, so the likelihood is that workers were driving in and taking up these spaces all day, meaning there was limited if any turnover of the parking spaces which would normally support retail business.

And, those of us in favor of closing the street on the weekends to support the Market area, inside and outside of the market, have a continuing battle to maintain this as a test.

One of the things I didn't like about the Hill Rag article is that because it focused on the letter from the "Market Row" merchants, it didn't cover the issue more broadly, and interview people who might be in favor of the weekend street closure.

This is going to continue to be a major issue for the next year.

Thus far, Councilmember Wells has taken a lot of heat for being favorable to the "test," which was started more as a way to accommodate displaced vendors, and less as a tactic to create a more interesting and accommodating walking-friendly urban environment.

(Disclosure: I am on the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee, which functions somewhat--not fully--as a board of directors.)