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OVERVIEW On December 31, 2007, eight months to the day after the tragic South Hall fire at Eastern Market, On this date, the Office of Property Management (OPM), with the seeming approval of the Mayor's Office and the City Council, plans to evict Market 5 Gallery, the 35 year tenant of the North Hall. For 35 years, Market 5 has run a "Poor Man's Kennedy Center" reaching out to all races, ages, genders, creeds, ethnicities and economic groups while launching such careers as singer Oscar Brown Jr., Clinton Portraitist Simee Knox, and Lion's Gate film director Zeb Berman. It currently hosts one of the most famous Argentine Tango venues in North America featuring world class dancers on a weekly basis. Even more important is Market 5's creation of its Weekend Craft Festival, one of the most famous craft festivals in America. According to plan, after OPM evicts Market 5 Gallery it will attempt, for the second time in 7 years, to steal Market 5 Gallery's renowned Weekend Craft Festival in an attempt to profit from the artistic and business entity Market 5 has spent 35 years creating. OPM does not seem to see any illegality or lack of integrity in this action. Yet, if this is allowed to happen we will look back on this defining moment, during the Fenty Administration, as the beginning of the end for Eastern Market as we have come to love it over these last 135 years. And like New Orleans, once this fragile ecosystem called Eastern Market is destroyed, it will be lost forever. OPM tried illegally to evict Market 5 Gallery and to usurp its Weekend Craft Festival 7 years ago, and it was resoundingly defeated by as many as 6 judges at every juncture of the judicial process. Yet, a few short weeks ago, in early November 2007, OPM was once again trying to strong-arm Market 5's vendors into writing out their rent checks to them and not to Market 5—one of the very tactics that caused them to lose their previous court case. The reason the City will try again to evict Market 5 is because over the past fifteen years it has allowed several small interrelated citizens' groups, who in no way mirror the demographic cross-section of the greater Eastern Market community, to orchestrate a private personal agenda at the expense of a long-standing community-based arts program. These "community groups" are composed predominantly of developers, real estate agents, lawyers, retired government officials and other ambitious people more concerned with gentrification, upscale development, and their own property values than in preserving one of the ten most fragile, rare, traditional, vital, culturally diverse neighborhoods in America. An abuse of power in the District of Columbia City Government system, that includes past and present elected officials, and the Office of Mayor itself, has allowed one of these groups in particular, the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee (EMCAC) to literally dictate the city government's decision-making process in a fashion inconsistent with public accountability. In the depositions, exhibits, affidavits, and declarations that follow it will be shown how during the years 1995-2000, three of these interrelated "community groups" culminating in the formation of EMCAC, and working in tandem with OPM, systematically and effectively by orchestrated effort:
Today, mouthing the buzzwords of Unified Market Management, EMCAC and OPM are once again attempting OPM claims they will change nothing but the management entity they install in place of Market 5 Gallery, but this will prove false. First and foremost, one of the issues the courts ruled most clearly on in the previous court case was the illegality of OPM's attempt to steal Market 5's ongoing business enterprise. Yet even if we ignore this elephant in the room, what we will immediately see is the new North Hall management, in an attempt to pay its new "fair market" rent, utilities, and fees, necessarily raising rents to its vendors to a prohibitive degree, thereby killing the very market it took so many decades to carefully grow . It's just that they will kill it with a two-step move instead of immediately converting the North Hall into "Union Station-East" as many of these same forces tried to do in the 80's and early 90's. Instead of witnessing this travesty come to pass, the City and Mayor Fenty should "Do the Right Thing" and honor the fragile ecosystem that is Eastern Market, and it should honor Market 5's great contributions to it, by retaining Market 5 Gallery and working with it and not against it for once. Market 5 possesses just as great a vision for its North Hall arts programs and its vending operations as it ever has, but it is difficult to bring this vision to fruition while it continually fights for its life against developers and "citizens' groups" who have an inordinate influence over OPM, to the point of causing serious injury to Market 5's ability to pay its rent. This has been Market 5's main problem for the past twenty years. Yet even despite such disadvantages, the truth is Market 5 Gallery is more responsible than any other single factor for raising the property values on Capitol Hill over the last three decades. Consider this: the farmers started Eastern Market, the Glasgow family shepherded it through a couple slow decades, but it took Market 5's arts programs and its weekend vending operation to make Eastern Market an international tourist attraction. And when Market 5 extended their craft market to Sunday, only then did the farmers, the retail stores and the restaurants follow suit. Look at any video clip of Eastern Market over the last couple decades and you will see Market 5 vendors and often Market 5 Gallery itself occupying the most prominent position in the film frame. Market 5 Gallery has been invaluable to D.C. as a visionary institution, and its artistic and business creations, in their far reaching echo effect, have increased gross profits for all those stores and restaurants around it, and generated countless millions of dollars for the City in tax revenue, all without receiving a dime from the City, and all without the City ever bringing the North Hall up to code with running water or heat, something the City has always promised the North Hall when raising its rent, but something it has, in fact, only accorded the South and Middle Hall. The very citizens' groups who have continually attacked Market 5 Gallery to control the valuable real estate it occupies in the North Hall are loathe to admit the truth of this paradox: By serving the community as a "Poor Man's Kennedy Center," Market 5 Gallery has actually raised property values—their property values—to a much greater degree than if it had taken the rational, orthodox, yet shortsighted business approach of trying to make every square foot of the North Hall pay for itself to the nth degree as every other business in the city must try to do. In allowing its vendors to grow their businesses by not taking half of everything they make, Market 5 has nurtured one of the last vestiges of the American Dream. Sometimes less is more. Sometimes wisdom resides in careful nurturing patience and not in impulsive shortsighted action. Hopefully Mayor Fenty, the City Council,
and OPM understand this before they destroy Market 5 Gallery and Eastern Market by treating it like just another piece of real estate. Market 5 Gallery is not just another piece of real estate, it is God's kiss upon the cheek of our fair City. Support Market 5 Gallery Click here to sign the petition to save Market 5 Gallery. For the 2nd time in 5 years the District Government, through its Office of Property Management (OPM) is attempting to evict Market 5 Gallery from the North Hall of Eastern Market. The last time it tried, the City was resoundingly defeated at every level of the judicial process. The Courts declared the City's eviction illegal,as well as OPM's attempt to wrest control of Market 5's Weekend Craft Festival. Market 5 has acted as a "Poor Man's Kennedy Center" for 35 years. It has created one of the very best Craft Markets in North America. WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT. Call on Mayor Fenty and OPM to DO THE RIGHT THING: THE D.C. GOVERNMENT AND THE MAYOR NEED TO SUPPORT MARKET 5 GALLERY NOT EVICT IT. (202) 727-2980 Market 5 is the very symbol of The American Dream. To evict Market 5 is to destroy an essential part of the most vital, diverse, and beautiful Market and neighborhood in D.C. Market 5 is truly God's kiss upon the cheek of our fair City. Depositions and Exhibits
*Note* Files are very large. It is recommended that you right click each link and select, "Save Target As..." to download.
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