Scheeder, with the help of Hill lawyer and EMCAC member David Sheldon, last fall vaulted to the chair of the organization that oversees the Eastern Market and is thought by some to be its conscience. She replaces tough-talking lawyer Ellen Opper-Weiner. Scheeder credits Opper-Weiner for aggressive, sometimes abrasive, leadership, “which got many of the big things done.” She says that what is needed now is a change toward teamwork among the market’s three political powers.
“I see this as a three-way partnership,” Scheeder said, “between the Office of Property Management, (market manager) Eastern Market Venture and EMCAC. And I look at the Eastern Market legislation as a little like the peace treaty that ended the warfare.” The 1989 bill regulated the market for the first time in its history.
Indeed, venerable Eastern Market at 7th Street and North Carolina Avenue S.E. has often been fought over as if it were some economic and social prize worth any cost to control — though it is only an antique grocery store that morphs into a outdoor market mecca every weekend.
The old market is still facing challenges. The first is the management style of market Manager Stuart Smith, the self-assured property man who runs Eastern Market Venture. Though he says his firm is a nonprofit entity, he gets a $94,000 annual fee plus expenses for running the place and fielding the complaints of the 13 indoor vendors. That, plus a handsome “construction management” fee of $8,000, didn’t keep him and partner Bruce Cook from making two notable goofs during the long-delayed construction of the market’s new $540,000 outdoor shed: Lighting, meant to illuminate the building’s 1876 architectural detail, was unaccountably placed on the wrong side of the shed, so that it shines onto the street, and drainage, meant to carry water away from the brick walkway beneath, floods the walkway with water, which can turn the area into a skating rink during a freeze.
Then there is the ongoing battle between North Hall proprietor John Harrod, who has successfully fought off city attempts to end his control of the Eastern Market Five gallery, and the South Hall merchants, who feel that Harrod has consistently outfoxed the city and won a separate deal for himself and his enterprise. They point out that Harrod, despite legislative language to the contrary, is essentially out of Smith’s control and operates under his own deal with city officials.
Last of the major issues is the long skirmish over merchants’ leases, now headed almost certainly to binding arbitration. South Hall merchants, operating for years on month-to-month leaseholds, want longer terms so that they can make investments and changes in their businesses. But they have rejected lease proposal after lease proposal on the grounds that the arrangements are too favorable to Smith and leave them holding the bag for many expenses. They also point out that the city will not give them a lease as favorable as that granted to Harrod.
Scheeder intends to concentrate on persuading Eastern Market Venture to follow its own business plan and remain within the terms of the 1989 legislation. Smith has shown a penchant for following his own marketing ideas — like a recent push to place contrasting tile on the market’s floor — many of which disregard long-fought notions of preserving the market’s historical integrity and its peculiar, funky feel.
Last summer, Scheeder, who lectures frequently on the effective use of office politics, described how to succeed with legislative clients by using “12 best practices.” At Eastern Market, strange as it seems, she may need to try all 12.
more pubs to pop up on hill
Developer Englert invades H Street N.E.
The city’s most active developer of successful new pub ideas plans to launch new ventures on the Hill. Joe Englert, who launched Politiki and the Pour House on Pennsylvania Avenue S.E., plans two new pubs on H Street N.E. and one far down Pennsylvania at 14th Street S.E.
The Englert touch is outlandish decor and an attempt to capitalize on the unique aspects of each local neighborhood. Thirsty people, he is fond of saying, want their pubs to reflect and show off their neighborhoods.
He plans to open Trusty’s, a “hot dog and chili” bar at 1420 Pennsylvania Ave. S.E., this month.
The two new spots on H Street N.E. are opening on a strip that has fought for years against crime and squalor to attract a middle-class crowd. Olympic, at 1206 H, will be a sports bar with pub dishes. Opening is expected this summer. A far more ambitious idea is Show Bar, to open at an undecided H Street N.E. address probably in the fall and featuring weekend entertainment and live shows, possibly vaudeville or circus acts.
While other pub and restaurant operators wait until an area is obviously on the upswing, Englert believes that the time to move is when real estate is relatively cheap, well before an area has become an accepted hot spot. He’s banking on the success of long-term efforts to restore H Street, which was decimated in the 1968 Martin Luther King assassination rioting, to its former place as a northern shopping strip for the Hill.
Ave, bill van den toorn
Par excellence
Local news lost one of its champions with the death of Hill Rag reporter and editor Bill van den Toorn, who succumbed to a frighteningly swift pancreatic cancer Dec. 13.
He was 66.
William Hendrik van den Toorn was one of those patient men who is willing to sit through the endless meetings of neighborhood groups — from the old citizens’ groups to the advisory neighborhood commissions, the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee and many others — sifting for his kernel of news.
Like a rosy-faced elf with a pipe clenched in his teeth — for Bill was slim, small and high complexioned — van den Toorn followed the oldest precepts of newspapering: listen to the voices, ask the questions. He covered Capitol Hill for more than 10 years, best known as the local reporter for Hill Rag, the free monthly, and gave that paper the sense of continuity and institutional memory that the swelling number of niche community papers lack.
Less known was van den Toorn’s long and distinguished government career, starting with the days, a few years after graduating from Brown University, when he served as legislative aide to Sen. Robert Griffin (R-Mich.). He went on to serve as congressional relations officer of the Office of Economic Opportunity, and did a similar stint at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
Here on the Hill, he was an imprint member of the Capitol Hill Restoration Society and chairman of its environmental committee. He served two terms as an Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner before beginning the news career that made him a household word here.
METRO
• Who can blame city officials for doubting new population figures that show that D.C. is still losing residents to the suburbs and dropped more than 4,000 people in 2003? Doubters point out that the Census Bureau’s stats are based on birth and death records, income tax filings and immigration trends and note that the census takers badly overestimated the city’s population loss in the ’90s. ...
• Inaugural mood is swinging. Some say this should be an austerity inaugural consistent with wartime, mounting deficits and security concerns. Others see it as a carpe diem for fat cats, with $250,000 corporate contributions and the ever-present possibility that the GOP may not win the White House next time. ...
• Quote most deserving of reprinting: “The demand for sensation is now so great that the system will now happily invent celebrities to fill any gaps.” — Tina Brown, Dec. 28. ...
• Boom, crash. The unforgiving wrecking ball has put an end to the Arthur Capper and Greenleaf Gardens public housing tracts below the Southeast/Southwest Freeway, changing that neighborhood completely in anticipation of what is to be a new city called Hope VI, a mixed development of offices, retail and mixed-income subsidized housing similar to nearby Ellen Wilson (oops, Capitol Hill Townhomes). ...
• Tom Glasgow, the youngest member of the dynastic Eastern Market Glasgow clan, has called an end to his beloved Saturday breakfast tradition, which saw people lined up for half a block for blueberry pancakes, fried fish and other delights. He cited labor troubles and increasing pressure on his outdoor dining tables from craft vendors. More later. ...
• Mayor Anthony Williams (D) has given D.C. restaurants a break at the behest of at-large Councilman Phil Mendelson (D) — amending what’s known as the “fat bill.” It would have required restaurants to list all the nutrients and food values in their dishes, requiring a complete menu overhaul. ...
• My vote for man of the year ’04: superdeveloper Jim Abdo, who turned forgotten Bryan School into the Hill’s hottest address and is spending $150 million to turn the National Children’s Museum at 3rd and H N.E. into lofts and apartments, bringing what’s most needed to the H Street N.E. revival: 500 homeowners who care about the area. |
