Vendors Ask, Where Is Everybody?

By Paul Schwartzman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 3, 2007

Mohamed Elrafai was in his usual spot yesterday at Eastern Market, seated among the Asian and Tibetan furniture he sells every weekend.

All that was missing was a steady flow of customers, which was why Elrafai devoted a good portion of the day bent over a chessboard, playing himself.

"I can sit here, and no one asks me for anything," he said, looking up from the pawn he had just moved. "They don't even ask me for a price."

In the five weeks since fire tore through Eastern Market, District and civic leaders have taken pains to highlight how the government and community quickly rallied in response to the devastation.

Yet despite the publicity generated by the fire and each new announcement of progress, the market's vendors say that they are seeing far fewer customers and that their revenue has plummeted.

"God, it's slow," Louise Morgal, 82, groused to her son, David, 47, as they watched over the fruit and vegetable stand the family has operated at the market for 45 years.

The Morgals said they have endured difficult periods before, including the aftermath of the 1968 riots, when friends warned Louise that she was crazy to open for business.

But even that period was not as difficult as the past month, she said. "It's very depressing, losing business like this."

Sonda Tamarr Allen, a jeweler who has operated a stand for 16 years, said it was as though the market was forgotten once the shock over the fire faded.

"We got national news that we had a fire, but we didn't get national news that we're still open," she said.

The nadir, Allen said, was two Sundays ago, when she grossed $32. She said she normally makes $800 on a weekend day.

"I see a lot of empty arms, swinging," said Michael Berman, a painter who occupies the stall next to Allen's, as he searched for evidence of patrons making purchases.

"All the feel-good stuff is great, how the community is coming together, but it's not translating into people's pockets," he said. "The net effect is demoralizing."

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) is scheduled to visit the market today as part of a drive to stir up business. And the market's managers have begun an advertising campaign to remind people that the merchants are open.

In general, vendors say they have been satisfied with the response of the government and community groups. Eighteen days after the fire, Fenty announced the start of construction on a $1.5 million structure to house 14 food vendors displaced from the market's south hall.

That facility will open in July, across from the market and on the playground of the Lemon G. Hine Junior High School. The displaced vendors are to return to the south hall after the market is renovated, which is expected to take up to two years.

Since the fire, the Capitol Hill Community Foundation has raised $265,000, funds that have been used to help merchants, including the purchase of a refrigerated truck for a poultry vendor. "The community and the merchants came together as a family," said Donna Scheeder, who chairs the Eastern Market Advisory Committee, the nonprofit group that oversees the market.

Yet Scheeder said the fire also gave new life to vendors' lingering complaints against Eastern Market Ventures, the company hired by the District to manage the market's daily operations.

Before the fire, vendors had criticized EMV for a lack of responsiveness and for failing to properly maintain the market. Those concerns were stirred anew when merchants noted that EMV's two market managers, Bruce Cook and Stuart Smith, were out of town the morning after the fire.

"Their representatives were mainly concerned with securing the structure so the contact with the merchants didn't happen, and that's what caused the problem," she said.

Scheeder said that although EMV has grown more responsive since the fire, community leaders want the District to find a more-qualified manager when the company's contract expires in December. "That may or may not be Eastern Market Ventures," she said.

Bryan Cook, an EMV manager now assigned to Eastern Market, said the company had representatives at the market immediately after the fire, including himself. He said they were in constant telephone contact with Smith and Bruce Cook, who is his father. "There was not a whole lot they could do that we couldn't do as an organization," Cook said. "We were attending to it."

Dan Donahue, whose Agora Farms produce stand has been at the market for 16 years, faulted EMV for failing to advertise that the vendors are open. "My customers come to me and they say, 'Oh, you're here,' " Donahue said.

His business has fallen off by as much as 70 percent, he said, causing him to reduce his Saturday staff from seven to two. "You see all these people up and down here," he said, gesturing toward the patrons spread out among the dozens of stalls north of his. "In the past, that would have been the number of people just at my stand. It was packed."

Up the street, Tom Elsdon, an art dealer, expressed confidence that the market will regain its footing, having been an institution since 1873.

A slowdown, Elsdon said, is part of the ebb and flow of a vendor's existence. "I try not to drape myself with a sense of entitlement," he said.