Save Eastern Market

Mayor Fenty toured the nearly-completed East Hall today, and announced that merchants should be open for business on August 25th, just over three weeks from now! It looks like the city will open the East Hall to the merchants starting August 18th, and has spent around $2.6 million to get the building constructed and equipped. Other bits of info that came out of the press conference: the CHCF has raised around $400,000 to date to help the displaced merchants, Home Depot donated a $2,000 gift card to each merchant to spend on replacement supplies, and the Fenty administration intends to reuse the temporary structure elsewhere in the city once the South Hall reconstruction is complete.

According to ABC7 News, the DC fire chief has certified the new East Hall temporary building as ready to house the Eastern Market merchants. (WTOP seems to agree.) That's good news!

The newest issue of Voice of the Hill came out this week, with a few nuggets of information about the Market. The issue can be found in a lot of Hill establishments, as well as downloaded (in PDF form).

• DC's Office of Property Management has named Stacy Norris as the new acting coordinator of issues related to Eastern Market. Her responsibilities include both the setup and oversight of the new East Hall as well as the rebuilding of the fire-damaged South Hall; she replaces Peter May, who stepped down from OPM earlier this summer.
• There's a nice article about how much work CHCF's Gary Peterson has done to help raise money for the Eastern Market merchants, a sum that tops $385,000 to date. Those who've worked CHCF's weekend booth on Seventh know how much passion Gary has for helping heal the Market community -- we all owe a lot to his energy and passion.
• Ben Weinstein reports on last month's EMCAC meeting, at which a main discussion point was whether or not the South Hall restoration should include installation of a skylight running the length of the roof. (There's debate about whether such a skylight ever existed in the South Hall, as well as questions about what the light would do to food safety and quality.)

Howdy, everyone -- like most people on the Hill, we're starting to gear up for the soft opening of the East Hall temporary building this coming Saturday! Word is filtering in from merchants that they've signed leases and will be in the building on Saturday; we'll wait to get more of a comprehensive list, and will likely post it tomorrow. If you have any information about specific merchants, please send it along!

In other news:

The Goethe-Institut Washington is going to be hosting a free panel discussion entitled “Bringing Eastern Market Back: Sounds, Pictures, and Historic Preservation” on Thursday, September 6th at 6:30 PM. (For those who're confused about the connection, the Goethe-Institut has a specific interest in Adlf Cluss, the German immigrant who designed quite a number of historic buildings in the District, including Eastern Market.) In addition to Cluss experts, participants in the panel include Baird Smith (the Quinn-Evans architect who's leading the South Hall rebuilding project) and Monte Edwards (one of our EMCAC members); it should be a great discussion.

Eastern Market Pottery has a new home! According to Gary Peterson's latest update, the group has started moving into space in the 200 block of Massachusetts Avenue, NE, and should be ready to open in September. As we get more information, we'll pass it along.

And of course, the opening of the East Hall won't interrupt the Eastern Market Music Series this Sunday. Scheduled to perform are Archie's Barbershop Jambassadors (at 10:30 AM) and the Bill Baker Trio (at 1:00 PM). As always, you can get more information about both groups at the CHCF website, and find them performing outside Port City Java. (Although I wonder if they'll find space by the East Hall this weekend? That would be ideal!)

So we've received word back, and it sounds like all of the South Hall merchants save Market Lunch will be opening up this Saturday in the new East Hall temporary building! (The folks at Market Lunch say that they won't have enough time to get everything set up -- which makes a little sense, given that their setup is a bit more complicated than most others'.) This is technically a “soft opening,” meaning that some merchants won't be at full stock, but it's enough to merit Mayor Fenty himself cutting the ribbon to officially open the western entrance to the building at 9:30 AM on Saturday.

A few merchants gave us more specific details on their plans for the weekend. Mike & Ray Bowers say that Bowers Fine Dairy Products will be fully-stocked; Eastern Market Grocery will have its full stock of pastas, sauces, olives, and pita bread, but won't have the normal grocery supplies yet. Canales Quality Meats is busily trying to work out what it'll have in stock, and Calomiris Fruits & Vegetables will be back to its normal variety of offerings.

Exciting!

I'll put up pictures tonight, but suffice it to say that the new East Hall building is everything that the Hill wanted and more -- the space is amazingly bright and open, the merchants are now back to more normal setups, and there's air conditioning! This morning's ribbon-cutting event was very well-attended, and throngs of people remain inside the building marveling at everything we've missed for the past four months.

Welcome back to the Market!

Update: the pictures are up!

The Washington Post has a nice article in today's paper about the opening of the East Hall yesterday.

There are two good bits of East Hall media coverage over the past day, one from Washingtonian.com and the other from the Express. The Express piece specifically lauds the return of the Eastern Market smell -- part fresh produce, part raw meat, part pastries and sweets, and all good. And Washingtonian.com has a nice slideshow of the new building; I'm partial to my own pictures, of course, but these are good as well. :)