Eastern Market DC's 150th anniversary last weekend | And my unrealized master plan for the market

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Update: Sunday 11/19/2023

As charlie said in the comments, I have unlimited ink.  I wrote this from memory, not notes and previous writings, so I didn't have "everything" when I first published it.  I've added a bunch of items in the programming section, as I've remembered.  

The idea is to also leverage the Market's status as a public and civic and community and nonprofit asset, and do things that a for profit food hall or market isn't likely to do, because it builds the community as a whole, beyond contributing to marginal revenue of the property asset.

Ultimately that EM is of and part of the community as a civic asset is its competitive advantage/unique selling proposition compared to for profit markets and food halls ("Modern-day food halls: The heart (and stomach) of the new economy," "So you want to build a food hall," JLL).  Although I was happy to draw on the best of CRE research to help EM.

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Eastern Market, from the 600 block of C Street SE.  Flickr photo by MrTinMD.

I got involved in Eastern Market because my mentor in historic preservation was one of the people who helped prevent the market from being converted into a food court in the late 1980s.  

In 2005, I served on the advisory committee for the International Public Markets Conference which covered both DC and Baltimore that year, led a tour, etc.  In 2007, I was appointed to serve on the Community Advisory Committee, representing the Eastern Market Preservation and Development Corporation.  I stepped down when we moved to Salt Lake in late 2019, although I thought at the time somehow I'd be maintaining residences in both places.

EMPDC was created by the Barry Administration to be a CDC and to take over management of the market, but vendors and other stakeholders fought the idea, and the market remained managed by the city--for a time by a putative nonprofit--with different spaces, like North Hall (arts) and Sunday under the shed run by different entities.  Plus the flea market on the then Hine School parking lot, also separate.

Flickr photo by Dan Malouff.

Stuff I suggested over the years.  I was "the youngest person" on the board for a long time, and the outlier.  I suggested many things over the years including:

-- creating a transportation management district for the Capitol Hill area, serving Eastern Market.  I first proposed to the city creating TMDs in 2005/2006.  They still haven't.  I first thought this for H Street, but it's relevant to Capitol Hill and other districts throughout the city.  I mentioned it over time.  

A big thing was parking and mobility coordination, for example the way Hyattsville does it for their Arts District.

-- offer a joint delivery service from the market at least within the neighborhood as a basic transportation demand management measure. The vendors kept whining about how residents couldn't drive and park, how supermarkets have free parking, etc.  My point was that if they didn't have to carry purchases back, they didn't need to drive to the market, and you could move multiple people at a time in an electric shuttle.

For a time a shuttle service was created by some of the area businesses to try to capture patrons to the Washington Nationals stadium, although the concept failed because there just was too much distance, and over time eater-tainment businesses developed around the stadium.

-- Create the Capitol Hill Destination Development, Management, and Marketing Plan.  This combined tourism and arts elements and was aimed at not only planning and coordinated marketing, but also getting all the various cultural assets to work together including Eastern Market, the Southeast Library, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, galleries, the Eastern Market Metro Plaza, Seward Park, Hill Center, other arts groups, St. Peter's Church (they have an amazing Tiffany stained glass window), potentially Congressional Cemetery, the Library of Congress, that church on 8th Street SE that also shows movies (I think it was a theater before, where I saw New Jack City in 1988), Folger Library and Theater, etc.  This should include a cultural plan element.

The idea was to be able to organize a day's worth of tourism activities in the area, including some shopping.  And to get funding from Destination DC to do it.  In other cities, not Washington, the city tourism agency generally funds a variety of sub-city initiatives.

As part of this, extend the special pavement of the 200 block of 7th Street to around Eastern Market Plaza (both sides) to knit this area together (this is rementioned below as appropriate).  People thought that would denigrate the Market building by making it less special.

-- Why the f* does the area have all these different organizations than one larger, better funded and supported bigger group?  There is the merchants association, a Main Street program for 8th Street, A SEPARATE MAIN STREET PROGRAM FOR PART OF PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE AND 7TH STREET!!!!!!!!, another not served commercial district on the 200 and 300 blocks of Pennsylvania, one by Potomac Metro, the Eastern Market, etc.  at least have a combined single Main Street program and include the 200 and 300 blocks too.

-- Make Eastern Market Metro Plaza great.  I participated in a workshop on the plaza led by Project for Public Spaces and Scenic America in 2004 (write up).  It laid the groundwork for connecting civic assets.  

Later, as part of BicycleSpace, a bicycle facilities system integration firm, I put together a proposal for activation including a water sculpture, lighting of the Metro Station escalator canopy, and multiple forms of secure, special bike parking.  Barracks Row Main Street got earmarks and did stuff, but I haven't seen it.  The gd contractor on the master plan kept refusing my request to ask for their plans.  I do know currently there are big disorder and management issues.

-- One of my later ideas in terms of the Destination Development Plan was to build a visitor center in the Metro Station, not unlike the visitor center in Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland.  It could also function as a transit service center.

-- Put historic (brown) highway signage for Capitol Hill and Eastern Market on the Southeast/Southwest Freeway.

Master Plan contract, 2019.  The anniversary ("Everyone has a memory | Eastern Market celebrates 150 years," WUSA-TV) reminds me that I got dissed in the process of landing a master plan contract for the future of the market.  

But me and the other guy an architect who were the leads didn't have prime contractor status, so we had to work with another group, and it turns out the one he chose--that had great local credibility--were more interested in paying their own staff, definitely not me, and demoting me from being one of the team leaders to a putz (I didn't handle that well, which led to me being canned).

To win, I gave the presentation of my life (after one of the other team members gave one of the worst), landed JLL as a member of the team, and wrote the initial market analysis.  We beat out a lot of other quite reputable firms.

Because of my work in commercial district revitalization and having been on the board for 13 years I had a very good handle on the market conditions in the retail trade area, and all of the competition EM faces from nearby entertainment districts like Union Market, Navy Yard, The Wharf, H Street NE, Downtown, etc.  

Another potential competitor in the future is a revived RFK district with a new football stadium.

Eastern Market is in one of the toughest food sales retail trade areas in the country.  In a 3 mile radius there are almost 15 other supermarkets, from upscale to discount, plus multiple entertainment districts to compete with.  And Union Market is a vicious competitor.  E.g., they just opened a Sunday outdoor farmers market ("Union Market Is Getting A Farmers Market Beginning Sept. 17," DCist).

What I would have proposed if I didn't get canned  

I have no idea what they ended up with.  I imagine it was mostly wasted.

Recommendation for how Eastern Market should be managed: an independent nonprofit.  An article, "West Side Market to transition to nonprofit management," in the Cleveland Plan Dealer reports that the West Side Market there is moving to nonprofit management, while the city will still own the building.

This was proposed a number of years ago for EM, first in the Barry Administration and then around 2012-2013, but the vendors fought it, with the support of now Mayor Muriel Bowser.  

The thing is, cities just don't have the chops to run retail businesses, although granted some public markets in a couple places are run by cities and they aren't absolutely bad (Lancaster Market is run by its city, but with a semi-independent market manager who doesn't treat it as a government job).  But the ability to be creative and to take risks is generally absent when the city runs the space.

I suggested that the Capitol Hill BID, granted not particularly visionary either, could be the entity, because the Milwaukee City BID was so successful in taking over its downtown market, after an underfunded nonprofit couldn't pull it off ("Milwaukee Public Market gets back to business," Milwaukee Business Journal).

But a nonprofit could do it, modeled after the Main Street program, but it would need to shake up what it draws from current board membership, because the EM Citizens Advisory Committee is  "stodgy."  

Basically, it's back to the concept of the Eastern Market Preservation and Development Corporation.  It's rare for me to say, but Marion Barry was right!  Note that the 1987 Plan for the Market still reads well.

Using the Main Street Approach to increase civic engagement and citizen involvement.  But at the same time, I wouldn't make the management all top-down.  I would use the Main Street Model.  It links business and property owners with citizens and other stakeholders, organizing work into committees, where they develop action plans for the year.    

It's mostly used for commercial districts, and there's one for 7th Street already (crazy, but that's another story).  But it works for civic assets too, like public markets, museums, and other public serving and facing assets.

The committees would concern design and maintenance, business development and recruitment, organizational development including fundraising and organizational communications, and what the model calls "promotion," which includes generally marketing of the building/district, special events and programming, and cross promotion between businesses.

Oversight would have to be shared between the BID and citizens involved in the Eastern Market oversight and action committee.  In a way, this carries on the spirit of the Eastern Market Citizen Advisory Committee but in a more professional and organized manner.

Why independent management?  Creativity and eater-tainment in markets and market districts: from Florida Market to Union Market.  The point about creativity in food halls, public markets, and market districts is made "indirectly," in a recent feature in the Washington Post, "A D.C. foodie’s guide: All the places to eat and drink at Union Market," about the Union Market district north of EM by a couple miles.  (There is also the semi-public seafood market at The Wharf in the SW Waterfront.)

Wayfinding and interpretation signage that Christopher Taylor Edwards and I developed as a concept to illustrate gaps in the DC wayfinding signage system, using the Florida Market as an example.  We did this in 2008 or 2009.

I was involved in helping "to save" that area c. 2006 and beyond, although what it's become is perhaps far beyond what I suggested, "Retail planning and Florida Market," 2009.  But I had the basic ideas down.

Not only did the Edens real estate firm revive the old DC Farmers Market building, they supported the development of a Latino market too, La Cosecha, and the integration of other food and drink related businesses in the broader district, the way it was long ago.  A lot of this was led by one of their early hires, who came from Jose Andres' restaurant group.

Cannon's Steak House was a premier restaurant in the old Florida Market District, just like St. Anselm's is today.  Postcard image.

Reading the article, I was struck about the level of business turnover--change is good, but there's a lot of lost capital in high turnover--in the main building.  

There are maybe two vendors that date to before the changes, a handful from the original launch, and mostly new vendors.

The contrast with Eastern Market is telling.  There is no real turnover of businesses, or ways to add new businesses, except outside on the weekly outdoor market line on the weekends.  

Eastern Market is the epitome of static, Union Market the epitome of dynamic.  The reality is that you need to keep changing things up to get people to return again and again, while at the same time maintaining a strong group of core destination businesses.

Contrast Eastern Market to most food halls.  EM also closes at 7 pm! 

Although granted food halls are mostly about prepared foods, not buying foods to cook later.  But definitely eater-tainment.

Eastern Market loses out on the dinner and night demographic.

The building design changes I was going to propose (I'm glad I didn't give them to them)

1.  Reconfigure the current market hall (South Hall) to add businesses, maybe some permanent, some short term.  The point was to introduce change and dynamism.

2.  Would it be possible to drop the on the floor walk-in refrigerators into the basement to add selling space?, although yes it would be less convenient for those vendors.  But you don't want refrigerators taking up potential selling space.  You want to maximize active, usable, revenue generating space.

3.  Add a mezzanine for seating in the South Hall, using the Indianapolis City Market and Baltimore's old Lexington Market as examples.  (I haven't seen the new Lexington yet.)

Bradbury Building

Note this might be impossible because there is interior historic designation on the building. Also buildings like the Bradbury Building in LA and the National Building Museum with amazing ornamental metwalwork as examples. It would also afford the ability for patrons to actually be able to look at the historic trusses and other architectural and engineering elements related to the roof.

I would have recommended making the argument that it was worth the change for providing visual access to the under roof elements.  Otherwise, I was prepared to recommend buying out the easement.

4.  Convert North Hall to food related businesses, including a demonstration/teaching kitchen (Reading Terminal Market, River Market in Little Rock, and the Boqueria in Barcelona have them), And ideally, a mezzanine too.  The kitchen could be used to support pop up restaurant services at night.

River Market, Little Rock.

Note that while North Hall was originally added to the building to add space for vendors, this was during the Depression (if I remember correctly), and there wasn't enough consistent demand for more vendors, so the space was converted to a fire station, and now serves as an arts and event facility and user defined space (e.g., nannies in inclement weather), intermittently programmed.

Note you could also just do it with second floor retail space.  Harris Teeter and Whole Foods do mezzanines but don't so much for selling space.  A Foodtown supermarket in Brooklyn does ("Foodtown Transforms Old Theater Into New Store," Progressive Grocer).

5.  Dig out the basement and put in a new floor for food related businesses, what about a brewpub, a chocolate production facility, cheesemaking, etc., along with more vendors for food, using the revamped Essex Market in New York City as an example.  The market in Budapest also has a pretty good basement with a lot of fermentation going on.  Pike Place Market has a basement but it's pretty plebian.

Somehow do the entrance as part of the plaza north of North Hall?  (Note that I don't know if this is structurally possible.  That's why you consult with structural engineers.  I have been underneath the building and it seemed possible.)

Entrance to the underground section of Essex Market

6.  Also somehow figure out how to put trash services in the basement (with an elevator to move them to ground level, likely on the North Carolina Avenue side of the building), to remove the dumpsters from the "back alley."  This will allow the conversion of the back alley to an arcade.

7.  The Rumsey Aquarium across from the market is reaching the end of its useful life and it can be rebuilt, using historically appropriate architecture.  I would do a nice red brick architecture building.  DC and the rest of the US has plenty of good examples, simple warehouse architecture is just fine.

Miller's Court, Baltimore.

Extend the building underground and up (maybe have to buy a couple houses) to put in an underground auditorium/space (perhaps on the C Street side) to replace but continue the arts functions of North Hall, and put in an underground pool.

Build a 3-4 story mixed use facility that could support food initiatives (more in the programming section below), more food businesses on the outside of the interior facing arcade, and another teaching kitchen at the minimum.  

8.  The top floor could be a meeting facility, comparable to the great room added to the Old Main Street Station in Richmond, Virginia ("A Tale of Two Terminals: How two railroad depots have become premiere event spaces," Richmond Style Weekly).  (It could create the potential for noise conflicts, as it abuts housing on C Street and North Carolina Avenue.)

Event space, Old Main Street Station, Richmond.

Meeting facility revenues as a source of subsidy for the rest of the market.  Note the meeting facility income issue is a big one.  From a "unique selling proposition" standpoint, the weakness of the food offer in Eastern Market currently means it needs to be strengthened.  The best opportunity to do with minimal expense is to make North Hall over into a food serving facility.

But the South Hall vendors I don't think want more competition and the city and CAC members think it's more important to make revenue from facility rental to otherwise support subsidizing operations of the rest of the market.

I say you have to put your mission first.  EM is being crushed by Union Market in terms of dynamism.  But it has historic architecture and other things going for it.  So EM needs to respond by converting North Hall to food.  This is a compromise.  But at the same time, it means reordering how the Rumsey Aquatic Center is currently organized and it could diminish the current service.  Which is why I suggest below a pool could be relocated to the 600 block of C Street SE as part of a complementary building.

9.  Get rid of the alley between Eastern Market and Rumsey, and make it an arcade, using the example of the arcade building type and the covered atrium at the Smithsonian Reynolds Center.  This would connect Eastern Market and the new Rumsey building, with seating and kiosks, with food shops on the ground floor of the Rumsey building, and maybe some kiosks along side the Market building.  

Leadenhall Market, London

Parking, parking, parking: Create a transportation management district.  There is a surface lot and an underground lot on the 600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, as well as a parking facility that is supposed to provide parking to Eastern Market in the 700 Pennsylvania Avenue SE building.  These spaces are minimally used on weekends and in the evenings.  There are also above and underground parking spaces on the 300 block.

1.  Create a transportation management district.  It should support sustainable modes (biking, walking, transit improvements, bike sharing, and scooter sharing and management) as well as motor vehicle parking.  DC created pilot "performance parking districts" 10+ years ago, and one includes parts of Capitol Hill.  But they weren't particularly well structured or systematic in processes for recommending and implementing improvements.

2.  Develop a shared parking scenario with valet stations and electric shuttle service that could also support the Barracks Row commercial district and other parts of the area, with valet stations throughout the district (I saw this in the North Park district of San Diego many years ago) and electric vehicle shuttles to move people around the TMD, from house to destination and back, for people driving to leave their car in one place, or because of the distances they don't want to walk, etc.

Since June, the SW Waterfront BID has offered exactly this service, using the firm Circuit ("Ride Southwest’s New EV Transit Vehicles:   Southwest MID Lauches Rideshare Transit System with Free Rides, Events," Hill Rag), which operates in 30 markets across the country.  No reason not to extend a similar service to Capitol Hill.  DC calls it a MID, a Mobility Innovation District.  FWIW, I've been writing about it as an element of the transit network since 2016 ("Intra-neighborhood (tertiary) transit revisited because of new San Diego service").

Circuit shuttle operating in SW DC.  I prefer a branded vehicle.  

Potentially there are sponsorship opportunities to help pay for it, 

but DC doesn't have that many organizations with the money and interest to do so..

3.  DC really screwed up by putting bike lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue here.  I would have made parking on the median sides of the boulevard on Pennsylvania Avenue, at least on weekends, to support Eastern Market.  Not sure how far you could take this along the Avenue, and if the US Capitol Police would have an objection.

But it would "solve" the perception that there isn't enough parking, or parking close by.  And it would destroy once and for all the complaints of all the vendors that parking is their number one business problem. 

Sunday church double parking on the median, 3900 block of New Hampshire Avenue NW

600 block of Pennsylvania Avenue SE

4.  Consider creating angle parking on North Carolina Avenue SE and South Carolina Avenue SE to support Eastern Market and the area, and to road diet those streets.

5.  As part of the shuttle program, patrons in some defined geographic area of Capitol Hill could get rides from and to home, carrying their purchases from Eastern Market and other places.  As a result there should be limited shuttle service Monday through Friday during the day and evenings, separate from the weekend service.

6.  A TMD should be extended to the 200 block of Pennsylvania Avenue SE.  There is an underground parking lot on the 200 block which is not open on weekends, and surface parking too.  Again, create a shared parking scenario.  There are a lot of complaints about "not enough parking."  But in this place (and others in the city), it's more about there being parking but it being inaccessible.

7.  Begin creating a network of secure bike parking facilities around Capitol Hill, including on 7th Street to serve Eastern Market (see "Another mention of the idea of creating a network of metropolitan scale secure bicycle parking facilities," 2019, for the concept).  Maybe bike valet services?  Obviously, I believe this should function at the metropolitan scale.  Relatedly, make the area into a "Bike Friendly Business District."

8.  Create a transit app for Capitol Hill (and other districts in the city). It could be on screens, as an app, as part of an integrated kiosk-information network. See item #10 in "Creating a Silver Spring "Sustainable Mobility District" | Part 3: Program items 10-18" (2017), for the concept.

Outdoor transit information display at Gallery Place

DC did a pilot of this, but never really expanded it.  Arlington and Montgomery Counties have done and still do this.  And I think MTA? at the Takoma Langley Crossroads Transit Center which is all bus now, but will add light rail.  Maybe they use the MoCo application there.

My thing is to make it an ad network also, which can support local nonprofits and local news media too.

9.  Treat intersections as a network and create a network of pedestrian scramble intersections along Pennsylvania Avenue.

10.  (This is also a programming recommendation.)  Extend the special pavement of the 200 block of 7th Street to around Eastern Market Plaza (both sides) to knit this area together: Eastern Market; Eastern Market Metrorail Station; Southeast Library; Metro Plazas east and west.

11.  Package valet and delivery services should be developed as an element of transportation demand management.  

12.  Freight delivery management planning.  For the businesses on the major streets and Eastern Market.  I'm a fan of time shifted delivery to reduce impact on narrow and congested streets.

A future expansion phase for "the building complex" to the opposite side of the 600 block of C Street.  Could build a building on top of the parking lot behind 600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE.  It could include more parking (parking, parking) underground, a culinary training facility, and other programs.

601 C Street SE (rear of 600 Pennsylvania Avenue SE)

Programming: From Eastern Market to the Eastern Market District | Position as a key anchor in the regional food system | From static to dynamic. So many issues.  All the places and many of the businesses that Eastern Market competes with are so much more active and professional when it comes to customer marketing.  

One of the problems is that there has been bifurcated management of different elements of "Eastern Market."  But now many of these elements have been consolidated into EM.  Regardless, the city management structure means that EM lacks the capacity and vision to do it and manage it.  It's like, how good do you think DC government as an entity is at marketing now?

But Eastern Market can become once again an anchor in the community food system, recognizing that DC is not an agricultural city per se, but its strength as a market for consumption and proximity to regional food production gives it an opportunity to be more prominent.  One element is what USDA calls community food hubs.  Another is how food is leveraged as a means of local revitalization.  DC is a big (enough) city, so how it does this is different from rural communities, but given how much money is spent on fresh and prepared meals, it's a huge element of the local economy, and can be leveraged to drive more local spending.

-- Book, Civic Agriculture

-- Regional Agriculture Initiative, Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments

-- Book, The Town that Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food 

-- Book, Building Community Food Webs

-- Book, Food Town, USA: Seven Unlikely Cities That are Changing the Way We Eat

-- Book, Reclaiming our food : how the grassroots food movement is changing the way we eat (Case studies on interesting community food movements)

-- Book, The Stop: How the Fight for Good Food Transformed a Community and Inspired a Movement, About a Toronto food bank and how it repositioned into a more community building focused organization around food and nutrition. It's a bit different from Eastern Market, but the ideas are relevant ("Food activist Nick Saul on why we’re ripe for a revolution" and "Nick Saul: The man who built the foodie bank," Toronto Star).

Edible City is an "old" book but provocative about food policy and opportunities in Toronto.

WRT programming, urban design, and activation, the weekend markets are seen as the "front porch" or entry/gateway to the Eastern Market district.  This idea needs to be embraced for the streets and spaces and shops leading to and around the market.

Eastern Market building/overall

1.  Extend hours.  EM closes at 7 pm, and on Mondays.  Change this for the building and area by doing daypart planning.  That means they miss out on the dinner and later evening daypart.  The market could be open later, but of course, not all the businesses would need to be open that late, especially the ones that sell fresh foods.

-- "Planning programming by daypart, month, season: and Boston Winter Garden, DC's Holiday Market, etc.," 2016

2.  Allow the sales of alcohol.  Right now places can't sell it.  If you want to add more prepared food outlets, and restaurant type operations this has to change.  Across the street on Independence Avenue SE is Hayden's, an independent liquor store.  Could it be incorporated into the new Market district?  The cheese shop could sell wine.  Many markets have specialty liquor stores. 

3.  Develop a premier food and retail business development/entrepreneurship program to identify and train potential business operators, to help them develop robust concepts, and to link them with space, financing and vendor support.  Complement this with business development services for existing businesses, and recruitment of existing businesses.  I would open this to anybody, whether or not they aim to open businesses in the Eastern Market district, Capitol Hill, or DC.  (I suggested something like this to the DC Main Street program in 2003, but it was too ambitious for them to understand.)

The aim of course is to help businesses develop and be successful and to locate them in the Eastern Market district.

That includes improving the merchandising abilities of the existing vendors.  For example, Bower's Fancy Dairy could have a prepared food counter featuring great cheese-based dishes, from grilled cheese to macaroni and cheese, and at night fondue.  Canales Deli has a restaurant across the street, Tortilla Cafe, with great dishes, it's a shame there wasn't room for it in the Market, etc.

4.  Programming businesses for the new Eastern Market basement annex.  You can just add more small shops focused on consumption, or you can focus on joining together food production and consumption.  The idea is to build the experience element, creating food products before your eyes, not just getting a plate of food delivered to your table. 

This would be a defining element of a Renewed Eastern Market.  (I think that was one of the positioning/marketing lines I came up with.  Along with the idea of having a lot of this launch on the 150th anniversary.)  Although there is a distillery and a brewpub in the larger Union Market district.

For example a brew pub, which you need a few thousand square feet for equipment (Denizens in Silver Spring as an example).  A coffee shop with roastery, like Vigilante Coffee in Hyattsville.  Get the Dairy Barn ice cream shop of the University of Maryland School of Agriculture to open a branch. Or a creamery making great ice cream on site, or the nitrogen ice cream operation SubZero, which makes ice cream treats on demand ("Science, plus ice cream, equals performance art," Sarasota Herald-Tribune).

Do a food fermentation operation.  Chocolate production.  Cheese production in association with Bower's Dairy, etc.  King's Roost in Los Angeles grinds specialty grains and has classes.  On site baking operations.  Bagels?  Artisan doughnuts.  If it were a Hispanic serving area--it isn't--fresh tortillas.  A vegan bakery?  Etc.

5.  Depending on if you can go down another basement level, you could create a certified food production kitchen to also support these businesses and other small food business development as an element of food entrepreneurship and microenterprise development.  It could support catering too.  

There are other such facilities in the area.  So it wouldn't be as unique.  But it's an important element of the business development function of markets.

6.  Leverage the food production kitchen to support nonprofit community food and business development initiatives, in a manner that the for profit food halls and operations don't.  La Cocina is an operation in San Francisco that works with immigrants to develop food businesses, but there are many such best practice examples of food production operations across the country.  In Salt Lake you have RISE Culinary Institute and there used to be the Flourish Bakery ("Salt Lake City’s Flourish Bakery changes lives of recovering addicts, but it needs a new home," Salt Lake Tribune), which train people in food production.  Together We Bake is a similar operation in Alexandria, Virginia.  Why not Eastern Market?  (There are for profit food production set ups elsewhere in DC. But the don't support civic initiatives.)

The Washington Post just had an article on the Mount Pleasant based organization ReDelicious, which does interesting stuff.  They should be doing it at EM.  

7.  Create an array of programming organized across food and arts and dayparts. Some of the programming should be consumption oriented.  Some food mission.  Some both.  For example a night market one or more days per month in the summer.  

I had the idea to do a summer BBQ weekend -- sure they do this Downtown on Pennsylvania Avenue, but focus less on competition and more on doing, from meat to vegetables to pizza.  Get Steve Raichlen and others. 

 And for the arts too.  I forgot til just now that I wanted our project to consult/do some case studies with other groups.  In the arts, the foremost one was the Portland Saturday Market, which is arts only.  I think they definitely do a better job on marketing.

The arts vendors have all the same issues as the food side, in that when outside arts sales started, there were few competitors.  Now there are tons, plus holiday markets, etc.  

On the arts side, Alexandria is dealing with similar issues, over the Torpedo Factory ("This torpedo factory has thrived as an artists colony for 42 years. Now everything might change," 2016, "As Alexandria looks to revamp the Torpedo Factory, artists fear they will be kicked out," 2021, Washington Post).

Use the daypart model, account for seasons, city-wide events that you may or may not be able to leverage, and organize it by program area -- food, arts, etc.  This should be indoors and outdoors.

8.  WRT event planning, create and distribute an annual calendar of events.  Do marketing -- harder as local media goes out of business, etc.  Work with Hill Rag community newspaper, websites, develop an active social media program, etc.

If Takoma Park Maryland can do an annual events calendar, 

so can Eastern Market and Capitol Hill

9.  Demonstration kitchens and broader food programming.  A smaller one could be in North Hall, a larger one in the Rumsey Building.  This could be done with DC agencies too, like the Office on Aging, WIC and other food support programs, to provide healthy cooking training.  You could also offer teaching opportunities to DC school kids through these facilities, like they do in Little Rock and Barcelona.  Many grocery chains do this, of course aimed at well off patrons, like Fairway in New York City and Harmon's in Greater Salt Lake.

18 Reasons is a nonprofit program by the Bi Rite Market of San Francisco ("Nonprofit Community Cooking School 18 Reasons Celebrates 15 Years In The San Francisco Bay Area," Forbes, "18 Reasons for Better Cooking at Home," SF Bay Times).  It's: 

a nonprofit community cooking school which teaches more than 7,000 Bay Area residents every year how to shop, cook and enjoy good food. 18 Reasons hosts classes and dinners at the 18th Street classroom every night of the week, and runs four, free multi-week cooking and nutrition education programs throughout the Bay Area: Cooking Matters, Planned & Prepped, Nourishing Pregnancy, and Food as Medicine.

On Capitol Hill, just a few blocks from Eastern Market, one household plants basil and other goodies in their treebox.

Baking and canning classes.  How to grow mushrooms or microgreens, etc.  For example, I haven't had good luck making bagels (Salt Lake is a bagel desert).  I'd happily take a class.

Composting and food waste.

What 18 Reasons does is a model for how to build a community focused food programming initiative, centered within the Market but with city-wide serving programs.   The Stop in Toronto also is a model for community programming around food.

For example, in Salt Lake there is a pre-Thanksgiving Vegan Dinner.  Some of the libraries in Salt Lake County have cookbook clubs, where people meet each month, cook items from a particular cookbook, and share the results.

I've always thought it would be cool to do this with the weekly recipes from the Washington Post and the New York Times, and food magazines.

Projects like the Tomato Independence Project in Boise ("Foodies and Farmers Wage War Against Tasteless Tomatoes," Boise Weekly, Building a Better Tomato," Edible Idaho) planting fruit trees ("How Angelenos are battling food insecurity by using hyperlocal apps to share their bounty," Los Angeles Times) and other Edible Landscape initiatives would improve community quality of life and could be launched and supported by Eastern Market.  

The UK's Real Bread Campaign focuses on shifting people from manufactured mass production bread to artisan bread, even the creation of micro-bakeries and "community supported bakeries" ("Real Bread Campaign gears up for 10th annual Sourdough September," Bakery&Snacks).  Why not have such a movement in the Chesapeake region, and a community-supported bakery in Eastern Market's "new (proposed) basement annex."  

During the pandemic, some bakeries gave away (or sold) sourdough starter to new adherents ("A chef gave away 500 sourdough starters and built a community around bread, pancakes and doughnuts," Washington Post).

Another food bank in Toronto, Food Share, has a salad bar program operating in a number of city high schools.

And the book Feed the Resistance: Recipes + Ideas for Getting Involved, which links food and activism.

The Project Open mixed use building in Salt Lake City grows herbs in its front spaces, which are free to pick.

Children and family programming too.  ChopChop Family is a magazine for families about food, cooking and nutrition.  Along the lines of broader community programming, the Flint (Michigan) Cultural Center Academy's food programs are a great model (Flint Kids East Fresh Foods, Flint Kids Cook, "COOKING CLASSES IN MICHIGAN ARE CHANGING KIDS LIVES," ChopChop Family).

The Monocle had a story in June 2019 about a children focused community food center in Tokyo, but I can't find my hard copy.  It's called Kageoka no Ie (House in Kageoka).  

Author talks and demonstrations.

Note the demonstration kitchens should be outfitted with cable television quality camera and production equipment to be able to produce television shows.

10. Dietary counseling  Safeway and Giant Supermarkets as part of their pharmacy offer nutrition programming and counseling. Maybe in conjunction with DOH this could be done for lower income patrons for counseling, and everyone wrt programming.

11. Membership program.  Could provide discounts on fee-based programs, access to a cookbook, food, and gardening library.  Cost could be based on income, and there should be an equity and outreach program to ensure the demographics of participants reflect DC's demographics.  

Eastern Market Metrorail Station and Plaza

12.  Program and police Eastern Market Metro Plaza/Metrorail Station.  It's the gateway to Eastern Market and Capitol Hill so verve and disorder matters ("Eastern Market Comittee Asks Council for Public Safety Improvements," Hill Rag).   I know Barracks Row Main Street and the Capitol Hill BID are supposed to be doing this but obviously they're inadequate.

Include movable tables and chairs, secure bicycle parking and other elements. 

13.  Build a visitor center in the mezzanine section of the Eastern Market Metrorail Station.  It can also serve as a Metrorail transit office.  Liverpool has some nice examples.  I don't like the London ones so much.  As mentioned, the visitor center in Pioneer Courthouse Square.  Tokyo Metro has good ones.  NYC Subway introduced some recently. Etc.  Should be funded in large part by Destination DC.

Liverpool

A wonderful example of how to do this is a few miles away in Hyattsville with the Maryland Milestones/Anacostia Trails Heritage Area Heritage Center. (It puts DC to shame.)

14.  One way to program the South/West Plaza is to connect the library more to the Plaza.  We suggested this almost 20 years ago in that PPS workshop, building a crosswalk from the library to the Plaza.  Incorporating the example of Bryant Park Reading Room.  One problem with author talks though is the outside noise.  Buses are loud.  (Note that the North/East Plaza has a playground and is residential, not business district oriented.  It needs to be monitored and maintained but is probably fine as is.)

Bryant Park, Flickr photo by John.

Maybe bringing back the idea of how the now defunct Newseum used to post front pages from around the country on their facade.  A similar presentation could be done on the west and south sides of the Metrorail escalator overhang.  Maybe with the national papers, and the local and regional papers (DC, Baltimore, Richmond, etc.) including community papers.

Incorporate book and media related art, including projections?  Inside the station too.

15.  Architectural/public art lighting of the Metrorail station canopy.  Bill FitzGibbons of San Antonio has done some interesting work with lighting.  Like El Centro Plaza for the VIA transit system.

Outdoors

16.  (As discussed above) Extend the special pavement of the 200 block of 7th Street to around Eastern Market Plaza (both sides) to knit this area together: Eastern Market; Eastern Market Metrorail Station; Southeast Library; Metro Plazas north/east and south/west.

Looking south, 400 block of 7th Street SE.  

Southeast Library on the left, Eastern Market Metro Plaza on the right.

17.  200 (and 300) block of 7th Street: keep it closed on weekends but extend this: make it a two block pedestrian mall all the time.  The South Hall vendors bitch and moan that the street is closed on the weekends.  But that is a huge attractor.  It's a competitive advantage that they fail to realize and appreciate.  Add some sort of package service served from C Street SE and North Carolina Avenue.  Provide the shuttle.  Make it easy for people to get to the market, but not have to park right there.

200 block of 7th Street SE on weekends with Eastern Market in the background

But if all the measures with regard to parking in the Transportation Management District are implemented, you don't need to drive and park on 7th Street, except for business delivery (this can be accommodated in the morning, when the street can be opened to vehicles).  So make it a two block pedestrian district, really the only one in DC.  That would be a huge differentiator vis a vis Eastern Market's competition.

The thing is to be successful, it has to be super duper programmed.  I've written a lot about this.

-- "Planning for place/urban design/neighborhoods versus planning for transportation modes: new 17th Street NW bike lanes | Walkable community planning versus "pedestrian" planning," 2021
-- "From more space to socially distance to a systematic program for pedestrian districts (Park City (Utah) Main Street Car Free on Sundays)," 2020
-- "Why doesn't every big city in North America have its own Las Ramblas?," 2020
-- "Diversity Plaza, Queens, a pedestrian exclusive block," 2020 -- "How to f*** up 17th Street NW in Dupont Circle," 2007 (about how those pedestrian malls that are successful work very hard to do so)

And C Street SE can still provide vehicular access in emergencies..

But alongside programming, there will need to be massive efforts ongoing to ensure all the storefront spaces are full and the stores and restaurants super successful.

Hat tip to Suzanne for reminding me.

Note that St. Lawrence Market in Toronto, and to some extent the area around Lancaster Market (Pennsylvania) are pedestrianized.

18.  String lights across the 200 and 300 blocks of 7th Street to create a visual gateway from the Eastern Market Metrorail station to Easatern Market.  Larimer Square is an example, so is St. Catherine Street in the summer in Montreal.  London business districts do this a lot, like Oxford Street, where the style of the overhang changes frequently.

Montreal

Oxford Street, London

Relatedly, make sure all the tree boxes have electrical connections to facilitate simplified electricity use for festivals, etc.

19.  Add quality and creative street furniture, picnic tables and movable tables and chairs around the Market building and on the now pedestrianized 200/300 blocks of 7th Street, on days of the week when there isn't outside vending.  Instead of crappy old picnic tables, use verve.

30th Street Station in Philadelphia (The Porch) and Union Station in Toronto ("Union Station in Toronto Launches Summer Activations as New Retailers are Added," Retail Insider) have done a lot on this dimension with programming and fun street furniture.

Adult swings at The Porch

20.  The weekend arts vendors should have access to a package delivery service.  Make it easy for patrons to buy stuff but not have to lug it around.

21.  300 block of 7th Street:  Use the Saturday daypart for small festivals.  On Saturday it's managed by Eastern Market, on Sundays by an independent vendor.  Special events draw new and repeat patrons. They add dynamism.

22.  700 block of C Street SE and spaces abutting the 700 Pennsylvania Avenue SE building.  This space is managed by the building owner, but there should be integrated management.  It's partially closed on weekends.  On Saturdays it should be integrated into festival programming on the 300 block of 7th Street.  It's already programmed by the Sunday master vendor.

23.  A weekly night market?  They are big in New York City and other places ("Here are all the NYC night markets to indulge in this summer," TimeOut New York).  It provides another opportunity to feature vendors who might not be in the district already.  At the same time, do planning development so existing businesses benefit just as much.  Again, dynamism.  

There is a Tuesday late afternoon/early evening market outside under the EM shed, at least there was.  I don't know how successful it is.

24.  "Dining in the street."  On some Friday nights in the spring and fall, like in Larimer Square in Denver.  Dynamism...

Dining al Fresco in Larimer Square, Denver

The new Rumsey building

25.  The Rumsey building non-sales spaces should be programmed around food.  For example, maybe FreshFarm Markets could have an office there (even though they are a competitor), the DC Food Policy Council could have an office.  Maybe the food programs of the DC Office of Health could have its food programs housed there like WIC and SNAP.  There could be exhibit space, an art collection around food related art, food related book library, etc.  Meeting rooms that are also usable by the public.

For example, Hill Center has certain public programs in their largest public room, but it's often too small for such events.  Use spaces in an expanded Eastern Market campus, such as for a volunteer fair ("Community engagement #1: Capitol Hill Volunteer Fair this Saturday," 2016).

26.  Rumsey Underground: Arts programming.  An arts plan needs to be developed, if the arts use is decided to be maintained.  For example, an auditorium can be built underground like the Salt Lake Central Library, and it could be used for performances.  The top floor meeting space too.  But it would have to be programmed.  Maybe there can be a resident theater company, etc.  This would retain the arts use currently provided by North Hall.  Could there be space for resident artists in the above ground building?  Etc.

27.  Rumsey Underground: Pool.  It could be built underground too.  But it might be difficult.  I'd put it in a building as part of the program for a building on the parking lot at 601 C Street SE.  But anyway instead of getting rid of this use, keep it, just place it somewhere different.  But incorporate public art tile elements into the pool (although this could interfere with competitive swimming requirements).

700 Pennsylvania Avenue/700 C Street SE Buildings

28.  Try to incorporate food related businesses.  There's a Trader Joe's already which draws a lot of patronage.  There was an ice creamery in the C Street building.  It closed due to business shenanigans.  I don't know if the company that took it over reopened the business.

29.  To support the arts vendors, develop an arts cooperative retail space that is a bricks and mortar business.  Low rent.  Operated by the vendors who show their work.  It would absorb unused space too, a benefit to the building owner and the streetscape.

Other: Create the Capitol Hill Destination Development, Management, and Marketing Plan, including a branding and identity study for Capitol Hill.  Our proposal didn't have enough money to do this.  I wanted a destination development person on our team, but the other lead was enamored with a kind of arcane study technique that he wanted to do, so I couldn't reprogram that money.  But I aimed to get a supplemental appropriation to move this necessary element forward.  

Around that time, the Capitol Hill BID started doing a branding study, which I saw as a congruent effort.  I haven't ever tried to get a copy, if they've even made it public, which I don't think they have.

Civic engagement.  Knowing how the citizenry is, neighborhood and community interest in Eastern Market, and how in the past various stakeholder groups have sabotaged necessary change, I planned for a seriously robust civic engagement process too.

Conclusion.  I don't have polite language to describe what happened to me over this, as well as the loss of the opportunity to do an amazing program.  And to get paid and have a job as an old guy.  I will always be angry about it.

Then again, DC lacks the vision to be able to do stuff like this anyway, based on my experience of all my previously ignored blog entry recommendations about policy and practice.