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City Market’s future concerns vendors
By Kathleen Dayton
Staff Writer
Just a few months past its 200th birthday, Charleston’s City Market awaits a new management team with revitalization plans that have longtime vendors and shopkeepers in the market feeling both excited and nervous.
Come April 30, all of the leases at the market will expire as the market’s manager, The Christopher Co., reaches the end of its contract. The city is considering proposals from other management companies and began holding public workshops last summer to gather opinions on how the market area could be improved.
“We don’t know if we have a life after this new contract, and it is quite disconcerting,” said David Forbes, who owns Market Street Bakery & Cafe with his wife, Cynthia.
“We think we’ll be here, we have high hopes, we just don’t know. Therefore, it’s worrisome,” he said.
Market tenants fear that rent could escalate or that their businesses could be eliminated as the city creates a new product mix for the area long known for a colorful array of goods both plastic and pricey. Here, locally made sweetgrass baskets are displayed alongside baby clothes and jars of jam, handmade jewelry, T-shirts, knickknacks and souvenirs.
With the right product mix and a new management team in place, city officials have said the market could yield $1.6 million a year in revenue. The city currently collects about $500,000 a year, most of which comes from one market building that has been controlled by the city.
The Christopher Co. has held the other three market buildings in a long-term lease and returns 10% of the revenue to the city.
Decreasing margins
Vendors and shopkeepers worry that the only way the city would try to increase the market’s profitability is to raise their rents, which they say are already prohibitive.
“We pay way too high rent right now and our margins are ever-decreasing with the cost of things going up, and we can’t raise our prices as fast,” Forbes said. “We ourselves spend almost $11 a day in parking.”
Parking in the congested market area has been a longstanding concern of tenants, along with flooding and the availability of restrooms. There is only one public restroom at the 40,000-square-foot facility.
Bill Usery, co-owner of Gita’s Gourmet, in business since 1974, said the City Market also needs more promotion.
“King Street gets an awful lot of promotion from the city, where we really don’t,” Usery said.
Keep the tourists, add the locals
William Gilliard III, a local real estate agent who participated on the city-appointed Market Advisory Board as the city began its search for a new management company, said feedback from the community emphasized bringing more products to the market that would attract locals in addition to tourists.
A ‘happy mix’
More local agricultural products would recreate the open-air market as it used to be, Gilliard said.
“I don’t know if you would go back to having fish parts in the market or meat at the market, but certainly more home-grown and homemade items,” Gilliard said.
Sharing local products with products and services that appeal to tourists can create a “happy mix” that Gilliard said might the best solution for the market.
Barry Newton, president of the Downtown Market Business Association, said the group of about 120 members has been working with the city for four years on a plan for improving the market area. Foremost on their wish list is a private management company.
“Private companies can move faster and do a better job,” Newton said. “Cities are basically too bureaucratic and too distracted and too political to be able to operate a large business on a daily basis.”
Newton’s group also wants a safety net for existing businesses at the market and hopes vendor changes can be made gradually, bringing in new vendors as old vendors leave.
“We don’t want people just arbitrarily kicked out and replaced,” Newton said.
The association also wants physical improvements, including new bathrooms, and more
promotion, including Christmas events and possibly an evening farmer’s market.
“One thing that has changed in the past 10 years is the market has a lot of competition for the local dollar and the tourist dollar that used to not exist,” Newton said.
Places like Mount Pleasant’s Towne Center and Freshfields Village on Johns Island now are competing for shoppers that used to come to the market, he said.
“They are constantly advertising and even sometimes have free carriage rides and crafts fairs,” Newton said. “In some cases, they’ve out-marketed the market. In many ways, downtown and the market are no longer the dead center of the Charleston universe.”
Sordid past, promising future
The City Market became a center of commerce in 1792, when a brick market was built near Meeting Street. A “Centre Market” consisting of separate sheds for meats and vegetables opened on the site in August 1807.
Since then, the area has been through good times and bad, transitioning from a popular meat and produce market in the 1940s to a nearly deserted, less than savory part of town by 1950. It was beyond dreary when The Christopher Co. proposed a makeover and leased it from the city in 1974.
“It was virtually deserted most of the time, except for a few homeless folks and derelicts that stayed in the neighborhood,” said Frank Lucas, one of the founders of The Christopher Co.
“Let’s say there were businesses down there that were really on the fringes of decency.”
The cleanup of the area involved the disposal of thousands of wine and liquor bottles and even a dead body.
“We did find a decomposed body,” Lucas said. “The contractors, I’m sure, called the police. Somehow or another, they disposed of it.”
Through the years, The Christopher Co. has had to deal with pigeon droppings, constant painting and roof damage from hurricanes. The company also raised the floor of the market in places to deal with Charleston’s flooding problems.
Focus on local products
Over the years, the company has received a great deal of advice from many people, including the city. Most have encouraged the company to keep the market simple and feature as many locally produced goods, arts and crafts as possibly, Lucas said.
“We’ve made every effort to do that. We’ve found virtual permanent places for the basket ladies to sell their wares. We have many tenants still there from the beginning and many who have gone on to open a larger scale business and done very well,” he said.
“We’ve done our best to not allow anything that might be objectionable from a buyer’s point of view. If we just opened it up and let people put in anything, we’d be in a world of trouble in short order.”
Lucas’ company made a business decision not to submit a proposal to the city for a new contract, he said.
“We certainly wish the city and whoever the successful operator might be hope for continued success and that the market continues to be a major asset to the city,” Lucas said.
Lucas said The Christopher Co. took a terribly blighted area of Charleston and made it one of the more attractive and desirable retail districts. Even locals who don’t make frequent purchases at the Charleston City Market are quick to bring guests from out of town to the market, he said.
“We feel like we’ve benefited and the city has benefited and certainly the citizens have benefited from having it cleaned up and put into active business use.”
Kathleen Dayton is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail her at kdayton@setcommedia.com.
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