King of Process
Will This be the End?

John Harrod's lease on the North Hall of Eastern Market ends at the end of 2006.

With a combination of legal smarts, understanding of the D.C. bureaucracy and canny use of the political process, Harrod's reign since 1973 has included the spacious North Hall where he runs dramas, art shows, workshops, movies and occasional private functions, the thriving brick plaza outside and along 7th St., where vendors flock and tourists abound every Sunday.

Harrod has made the place a tour destination, and he doesn't intend to give it up. "I'm not going to give up my business without a fight," he told The Hill, "Would you?" He said he has no thoughts of retirement.

John Harrod is a calm man in his 60s who can be found weekdays in his tiny un-air conditioned office in the corner of Market Five Gallery. He faces the latest crisis - the end of the lease and the fact he has not applied for renewal by a July 31 deadline, with a smile. "I will ask them for an extension," he told the Hill. Behind the mild facade and his thick glasses is a unique intellect, that of a man who has fought the city and won several times, a man who is so adept at that favorite D.C. word - "process" that bureaucrats and local activists fear him. When last the city made moves to oust him in 2002 on the grounds that he was not really a tenant of the Hall he occupies, Don Temple, Harrod's high powered lawyer, dismembered their case; Superior Court judges, including the late legendary Steffan Graae (spelling okay), dismissed the eviction suit.

Since then Harrod has made compromises when necessary with the powers that be - EMCAC, (Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee), EMV (Eastern Market Venture), the legal manager of the market, and OPM, (Office of Property Management), which owns both the 1873 Main Market Hall and the 1809 North Hall addition. But he has never lost control completely.

Except for a brief period when the city moved against him with the 2002 eviction suit and the Gallery and the vending was run as a cooperative. But Harrod soon won that fight, using the law and the city's own love of process to his advantage.

This time, in spite of a general feeling among merchants that Harrod will again fend off ouster, things may be different. One thing is the very size of the weekend market activity along 7th St. S.E. Once a regular trip for locals, the North Plaza has become famous. It has benefited greatly from two other nearby enterprises - the Saturday Crafts market in the Hine Junior High School playground, run by Carol Wright, and the Sunday Flea market, developed and run by former furniture auctioneer Tom Rall.

Not to forget the Eastern Market itself; at first merchants there fought Sunday opening (indeed, it was once illegal) but slowly found that the crowds bought groceries, fish and meat and cheese and vegetables as well, and now count it as their best sales day.

There's also a young pretender to the North Hall. He's Michael Berman, artist and entrepreneur, who has been selling his pictures at the weekend markets for years. A deft businessman, Berman has turned a score of under-used Hill garages into a thriving art studio rental business, and plans soon to launch a new tourist business, a tour of Hill alleys.

Berman ran the market during the brief period when the city attempted to evict him - merchants remember the period favorably, consider Berman fair and experienced. "If the job comes up for bit, I will go for it," Bermans said last week. But he added he is well aware of Harrod's infighting ability and has not illusions. " It's not over, he joked."

Stadium's Fate Seems Far-Fetched

There's a curious detachment about the fate of the 190 Robert F. Kennedy Stadium site; and one thing that's curious is that no one seems to care much about what happens to the doomed structure.

One simple explanation: It's out of our control.

The federal government owns all of the property (as well as the 67 acres known as Reservation 13 where the D.C. Jail, and D.C. General Hospital sits mostly vacant.) the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) held a forum on possible uses for the site a couple of weeks ago - but it seemed a pro-forma nod to "community involvement."

Now NCPC has come up with three possible scenarios for the site - and in the shorthand used by Washington Business Journal, they are: 1. More shopping. 2. Monuments and Cars. 3. Play Don't Stay.

The players with some power in this planning game are not the local committees, the Advisory Neighborhood Commissions or civic groups. They are government entities like the National Park Service, which sees the area as a natural place for sports activities on soccer and baseball fields. Another power is the D.C. National Guard, hankering for a new headquarters building. Then there is Congress, which has authorized, but not specifically placed, a 15-acre site for a private boarding school.

And NCPC has its own agenda, which is to use the area as an eastern grand entry to Washington, with monuments and an echo of the National Mall. The federal planning body has argued for years that the National Mall is close to overload with monuments and activities.

All the plans contain a housing element on the north portion of the site.

What about local government's view? D.C. is not pushing any plan. City planners would like to see housing, because that will increase revenue. But they also recognize that whatever happens, Federal, not local officials are in charge. The only oar that the city could stick in, according to the Journal's Sean Madigan, is to continue the lease as is. Under the present arrangement, the city has an indeterminate right to use the stadium - as a stadium.

City Schools Face Crisis Fall 2006

A quiet crisis faces the District's (and the Hill's) Public Schools this fall.

All over the city, parents are making decisions about the coming school year. On Capitol Hill they will back the public schools, the increasing number of charter schools, or the presently over-subscribed private schools.

These parents' decisions are probably the most important force for the future of this and other "gentrifying" neighborhood. The nature of the neighborhoods where new city inhabitants live will change radically if it's found that the schools are not acceptable.

On the Hill great efforts have been made to make the publics acceptable. One such is the School Libraries Project, spearheaded by the Cypriot family and Todd Cymrot, to renovate eight Hill DCPS libraries with $2.4 million, one third public money, one third community donors, and the last third still to be raised.

If the public schools continue in decline, the neighborhoods will start losing the young families which have been so visible here in the past five or six years. They will start gaining in numbers of single, older and childless couples - people who no longer need schools.

DCPS' further decline will also lead to gains by the charter and private schools, and certainly increasing friction between the charters and the publics, both of which are funded from the same source of revenue.

But from the street, there is little the individual can do about such large demographic trends. Certainly more middle class people are coming to Capitol Hill, many of them with young children. Their choices, or their choice to leave after a year or two, can't be predicted.

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