And at the Market, change is...met with resistance

[rlibkind]

High-rise condominiums are going up around the Market, ushering in an upscale class of potential Market shoppers. Four luxury condo projects within a few blocks are scheduled to open in 2008 and 2009, totaling 548 new homes. Average purchase price: $1.6 million....

Downtown condo dwellers have food-shopping options besides the Market. Specialty grocers such as Whole Foods....

These markets offer downtown condo dwellers something [the] Market does not — a place to shop for groceries after 6 p.m....

More pressure undoubtedly will be put on Market vendors and merchants — particularly those selling food — to stay open later to better serve the downtown condo crowd. That would mark a radical reversal in the up-early, home-early traditions of those who make their living at the Market.

And at the Market, change often is met with resistance.

The diverse mix of farmers, retailers, restaurateurs and artisans rarely agree about anything, and their relationship with Market administration has long been adversarial. Drama and anxiety are part of the character of the Market community.

Will residents of pricey condos insist that the Market abandon its gritty ways? Will the Market's administration respond by gentrifying the Market to meet a demand? And will the Market lose its character as a result?

Sound familiar, Philadelphians? But, no, this quote is not about the Reading Terminal Market. It's from this past Sunday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and "the Market" is Pike Place. You can read the full story here, at least as long as the P-I keeps the page alive. (And thanks to Paul Steinke, RTM manager, for bringing the article to my attention.)

[MarketStEl]

Minor correction: It's not in the P-I.

This item is part of a feature package The Seattle Times ran Sunday in connection with Pike Place Market's 100th anniversary.

(Yeah, that surprised me too when I saw the e-mail from Paul in my mailbox. Usually, whenever I receive an e-mailed news story from or about something in Seattle, it's something that ran in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the smaller of Seattle's two dailies. The two papers are separately owned -- the P-I by Hearst, the Times by a local family, IIRC -- but share advertising, circulation, marketing and production through a Joint Operating Agreement dating to 1983 under the Newspaper Preservation Act.)

The similarities to the situation in Philadelphia are indeed striking -- substitute "Reading Terminal Market" for "Pike Place Market" in the Seattle Times story (and adjust the prices of the condos downward a smidgen) and you could run this same story in The Philadelphia Inquirer. (Okay, there are a few other minor adjustments: Although RTM merchants are also a famously independent-minded lot, there is not a "history" of antagonistic merchant-management relations at the RTM, for instance, and local craftspeople do not play as large a role there as they do at Pike Place.)

The one common element that is perhaps most striking of all is the degree to which the entire community takes a proprietary interest in these institutions. Locals consider both markets part of the soul of their respective cities, and changes and rumors of changes receive significant play in the press and a higher level of public interest than, say, the opening or closing of stores in a local shopping mall or even the city's downtown would spark. To borrow the Reading Terminal Market's current promotional slogan, Seattleites and Philadelphians have indeed "made" these places "their markets".

To what extent is this true in the city where you live? Would Baltimoreans wage a Battle of Lexington Market were that place to reorient itself to a new wave of potential customers? Will Washington's Eastern Market be the same place once it is rebuilt?

Edited August 15, 2007 by MarketStEl (log)