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City explores new City Market management
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Charleston’s City Market, one of the town’s most prominent tourist attractions, had its 200th birthday last month and is on the verge of change.
The city held a community meeting July 26 to gather public opinion on the market area and thoughts on what might improve the district.
The Christopher Co., which has leased most of the market buildings from the city and managed the area for 30 years, will have its lease expire in April 2008. The city will begin considering proposals from other management companies by September as it tries to determine who should run the Market.
The Christopher Co. can submit a proposal along with other management companies, said Josh Martin, the city’s planning director. The city will hold another public workshop on the Market district once a management company has been selected, Martin said.
“We feel it is important for the management company to understand all the public input,” Martin said. “We shouldn’t plan within the four corners of our office. We should plan with the public.”
David O’Neil, a marketing consultant who has specialized in the revitalization of city markets for the past 27 years, has been hired by the city as an adviser for the project.
O’Neil led the revitalization of Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal and works for Project for Public Spaces, a New York-based nonprofit organization that aims to improve the public realm, he said.
O’Neil spoke to a group of more than 200 people who attended the recent community meeting, held at the First Baptist Church School Gymnasium in the City Market district.
“I’ve been dying to come here, because you’ve got a great city market,” O’Neil told the crowd.
Someone in the audience then shouted, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
O’Neil said it is not as if the City Market is in trouble.
“It’s not broken at all,” he said. “The heart’s beating. We’re not here to fix it; that’s not the intent.”
O’Neil said some market renovations around the country have made the mistake of over-commercializing and shutting out open-air vendors such as produce stands, butchers and fishmongers.
“They lost the heart and soul of it,” O’Neil said.
A successful market, he said, has an economic spinoff on businesses in the surrounding area.
Most of the participants at the recent community workshop were business owners and vendors from the area. They were asked to fill out forms answering questions such has what would make the City Market work better with the surrounding neighborhood and what changes they might or might not like to see.
Some business owners are already concerned about possible changes.
“We’re in fear of increased rents,” said David Forbes, who owns Market Street Bakery and Café with his wife, Cynthia Forbes.
“Rents are already very high. We also don’t want to have any [retail] chains in here. That’s the uniqueness of the market,” David Forbes said.
Other concerns are the cleanliness of the Market and the availability of public restrooms. Parking is a major issue, Cynthia Forbes said.
“The Market is one of those destinations for tourists and it needs to be more user-friendly,” she said. “I run a staff of five or six people. Employees down here have no place to park without spending a large portion of their paycheck. The people who are in the businesses down here are driving the tourists to the area and it would be helpful if they were aided in doing their job instead of being penalized for it.”
Diane Heaton, a jewelry vendor in the City Market, said the area needs an overhaul.
“I think it needs to be cleaned up from top to bottom,” Heaton said. “It needs strict management and it needs to work with the local residents.”
William Gilliard, a local real estate agent who is a member of the Market Advisory Board, a city-appointed group of citizens working on the improvement project, said one of his hopes is that the City Market will become more attractive to locals in addition to tourists.
“Residents of Charleston don’t necessarily see a reason to patronize the market,” Gilliard said. “City residents don’t necessarily feel the market is for them. It’s for tourists.”
Gilliard, a Charleston native who was raised outside of the area, said the City Market is one of Charleston’s most important destinations.
“I’ve always considered the market as a staple attraction,” Gilliard said. “Every time I came back to Charleston, the Market was the place I had to see.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@charlestonbusiness.com.
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