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Supplying Fresh Controversy for 300 Years
Facing Lawsuit, City Officials Ponder What to Do With Dockside Market House

The Washington Post
February 19, 2008

By Raymond McCaffrey

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 19, 2008; Page B03

inside market houseThroughout its long history, the Annapolis Market House has been as much a source of conflict and bad publicity as it has been of oysters and crab cakes.

>> A sparse crowd checks out the food stalls at Annapolis's Market House on an afternoon last month. The market occupies a prime location by the City Dock. (By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)

The central landmark in the tourist-friendly City Dock area, the market has been the focus of battles pitting residents against businesses, butchers against farmers, men against women and seemingly everybody against the city government.

Now, the city-owned market, an institution created by the Maryland General Assembly in 1683, seems poised to be transformed yet again.

Facing a $2 million breach-of-contract suit from a management company brought in to transform the market into a more upscale venue, exasperated city officials are exploring two opposite paths: selling the market outright or taking over the operation and making it a lynchpin of a downtown revitalization.

In pursuing either option, the city risks entanglement with what has long functioned as the third rail of Annapolis politics. City Councils have tried to tear the Market House down, refashion it or build it up. Time and again, the result has been the same: lost court fights and, sometimes, dashed political careers.

"You can't change a light bulb at the Market House without it making the front page of the paper," said Alderman Sam Shropshire (D-Ward 7).

The landmark has been troubled for so long that in 2006 the local paper asked in an editorial: "Did someone put a curse on Market House?"

"It does seem like that," Alderman Ross H. Arnett III (D-Ward 8) said in an interview. "It does seem like we go from one troubling thing to another."

Part of the movement to reshape or jettison the Market House is fueled by the belief that its present incarnation -- a food court on one of the city's prime waterfront locations -- cannot withstand the economic forces threatening downtown businesses. Customers are being drawn away to malls outside the city limits, which will include a major new development under construction in nearby Parole. Visions of a new Market House include a remodeled building with seating and windows that take advantage of the harbor views.

Any significant change at the Market House probably would require a painful buyout of the city's 20-year lease with the management company. Also, a sale or transfer might be subject to challenge on the grounds that the property was deeded to the city for a specific purpose.

Still, Shropshire said, "the city should get out of real estate management and sell it." He said the city is "certainly not making money out of it. We're losing it."

It's unclear what would become of the Market House if it was sold. Among the possibilities are that it could continue to serve as a market under either private for-profit ownership or the control of a nonprofit entity or trust.

Publicity from the suit has been so bad that Mayor Ellen O. Moyer (D) and members of the City Council endorsed a letter saying that the city will "avoid trying this case in the court of public opinion."

In 2005, the city parted ways with longtime vendors at the Market House and invited Dean & DeLuca, a New York gourmet grocer, to bring its Upper East Side cache to the Annapolis waterfront. Dean & DeLuca backed out, and the Market House sat empty for almost two years. It reopened with a dozen food vendors and stores in April 2006.

The revamped Market House has struggled under the management of Silver Spring-based Site Reality, which also manages the District's Eastern Market. In its lawsuit, Market House Ventures, a Site subsidiary, said it has lost two tenants as a result of the city's failure to install a sufficient heating and air conditioning system.

Moyer said the city was planning to upgrade the system.

Her vision of the Market House's future doesn't involve its sale, but it doesn't involve another outside management company, either. "We did that," she said. "That sure as heck hasn't been very successful."

She would like to see the city manage it. She and others have talked about their hope that the Market House could become a green grocer or an open market like the Eastern Market. Another revitalization project already is underway in the area: the $9 million facelift at the City Dock, which includes the revamping of the park on the water's edge. Council members hope to do more to improve the downtown, maybe even closing Main Street to traffic.

The Market House's location has contributed to its enduring controversy. The first Market House building was moved after residents complained that it blocked their view of the water, said Ginger Doyel, the author of "Gone to Market: The Annapolis Market House, 1698-2005."

"I think that the Market House has been a consistently controversial site because it occupies land that's been used by groups with often times competing and conflicting interests," Doyel said.

The Market House's own Web site notes that it "has been the source of much controversy" over "policies, hours of operation, market layout and size, market management, zoning, debates over maintenance costs, and many other issues." Doyel said butchers have squabbled with farmers for better stall space. In the 1930s, women's rights advocates sent "a chiding letter" to city officials after they fired the "market mistress" who managed the building because the officials decided a woman couldn't handle expanded duties that included overseeing port activities, Doyel said.

For most of its first century, the Market House was moved from one location to another. In 1784, Doyel said, some businessmen deeded to the city land "for the reception of sales and provisions" to be sold in "a good substantial brick stone or framed market house."

That deed -- which governs the site of the current Market House, built in 1858 -- has withstood many challenges. In the late 1960s, Doyel said, a council effort to tear down the building "to open up the city's waterfront" was blocked by historic preservationists who discovered that the property's deed said that "if it was used for anything but a Market House, it would revert to the heirs" of the original owners.

Doyel said that the provision may no longer be valid because the heirs have not fulfilled a legal requirement to periodically re-register the so-called reverter clause. Under that interpretation, the centuries-old institution could be replaced with a more profitable venture on the prime waterfront property.

"It's easy to look back and romanticize the past," Doyel said. "And while it would be romantic to have a traditional Market House with fresh goods, I don't think it's economically viable."

But romanticizing the past is what Annapolis specializes in. Arnett said that the council would be "seriously reconsidering what we need to do" at the Market House but that it would be difficult to sever ties with such a landmark.

"It's part of the history of Annapolis," Arnett said. "If history is our niche, it would seem strange to lose part of our niche."

Published Feb. 19,2008, The Washington Post