Market House Saga Continues: Sources Confirm Lehr Jackson Lease Imminent Contrary to Cohen Assurances

By Kyle Stewart

Four pieces of information every Annapolitan should know about the Market House Saga:

1. The city government has repeatedly ignored substantial research provided by a group of our city’s top businesspeople and community leaders showing that the city’s current strategy does not tackle the central problem of the Market House.

2. The current administration’s fiscal goal under a new lease agreement is for the Market House to merely break-even over the course any long-term lease.

3. Developer Lehr Jackson has recently been introducing himself around town as the “new developer/manager of the Market House,” contradicting the Mayor’s numerous assurances that the city has not entered into any agreements with a potential management company.

4. Rumor has it that Mayor Cohen has been quietly lobbying the City Council to extend his current short-term leasing authority to allow him to sign a long-term lease for the Market House without the Council’s approval.

It’s time for the people of Annapolis and our government to have an honest conversation about the future of the Market House and what it means for our city.

What will this city look like in twenty years?

I asked myself that very question as I stood in the middle of the near-lifeless Market House building yesterday morning. For many of us, it’s difficult to imagine what we’ll be doing next year – let alone five, ten or twenty from now. The way that the current financial crisis, globalization and technology are affecting the world around us, chances are that even the most thoughtful among us are having problems envisioning what life in Annapolis will be like in the year 2030.

And yet, while the future is difficult if not impossible to predict under normal circumstances, we as a city are about to make a decision that will affect our destiny for the next two decades; maybe even longer. Well, to be frank, we’re not making the decision – our politicians are, and without the transparency that our city is owed.

Market House, the one iconic fixture of our city’s landscape that is truly ours (the capital is our state’s, the Naval Academy is our nation’s, and St. John’s belongs to Western civilization), will soon be turned over to the control of a company that has not proved it understands our city’s identity and which has no direct accountability to the people. Furthermore, the decision to allow this company to re-envision and manage the Market House has not been made by public servants who have taken seriously the wisdom, vision and desire of the city they were elected to serve. From all appearances, this decision has been made without our knowledge by a new mayor whose ambition for higher office drives him towards political expediency – not wisdom or even consensus – and a City Council that is either too tired or too lazy to stand up to him and seek creative solutions to Market House’s troubled past and present.

Even more concerning than the seemingly failed integrity and commitment of this young administration are its failure to address the foundational issues that have plagued our city’s landmark and its willingness to settle for a solution that is so embarrassingly mediocre.

The well-documented history of Market House and the inability of previous administrations to restore the site to its place as a thriving cultural and economic hub are obvious. Yet the current administration, turning a blind eye to history, is echoing the assumptions of its failed predecessors – the same predecessors from whom the administration worked so hard to distinguish itself. In its eyes, the problem with the Market House has been poor private management and a lack of viable vendors. Get a new management company with better credentials that will bring in exciting new vendors and Market House’s problems will be solved, so the logic seems to go. But this strategy has already been tried and has failed, miserably.

What is truly embarrassing about the current plan for the Market House is that the proposed agreement – which will surely be signed unless our citizens speak against it – is not projected to generate any profit for the city over the course of the twenty-year lease, but merely to break even. That’s right – break even. The current administration has resigned itself after only eight months on the job to sign away our rights to our treasured site with the intent that one of Annapolis’ prime pieces of real estate located in the very heart of our business district will simply not cost the city any money over the next two decades. At best, the current administration should acknowledge its lack of vision; at worst, failure to due diligence or something more contemptible.

In its defense, the administration will most likely point to the “open auditions” that were held for new potential management. But the reality is that for whatever reason, according to applicants, few were given a fair opportunity to make their presentations. And let’s be honest: even if they were all given a fair shot to make their case, it’s not wise to make decisions that will affect the life of a city – even more so the city’s identity – for the next two decades based on a few months worth of proposals.

Armed with this information, our city is now faced with the question of what to do. I’ll offer two sets of choices to get the conversation rolling, although there may be more and I would invite anyone who believes they see others to contribute them.

First of all, we Annapolitans must decide whether to take our destiny into our own hands to fashion it according to our will and our vision, or sit idly by as the powers which we have put in place (but will likely not even live here by the time the intended lease on the Market House runs out) assert their own plans.

Secondly, if we decide to take control of our proud city’s future once again, our first goal should be to get our elected officials to enter into an honest, ongoing conversation with us concerning their actions and plans, and that needs to happen by any means necessary. If our elected officials will not voluntarily be transparent with us and if we will not demand it, we have all-but willingly submitted ourselves to tyrants.

Friends and neighbors, history has clearly taught that hasty decisions and political expediency have cost us dearly – much more than $2.5 million dollars, in fact. Not taking ownership of our historic Market House, diligently seeking creative solutions, and keeping our elected officials accountable has begun to erode our city’s identity, a trend that will continue if we fail to rise to this occasion. Now is the time to act, before we find ourselves chained to someone else’s vision of our next twenty years.

I invite my fellow Annapolitans and our elected officials, beginning with Mayor Cohen and the City Council, to sit down at the table to talk about these issues in the public forum. We acknowledge that there may be more sides to this story than we’ve represented here, and we’d love to hear them.

NOTE: Mayor Cohen was unavailable for comment prior to publishing, but Annapolis City PIO Phil McGowan went on record saying that “…the city is not able to comment on the matter since we are still in negotiations.”

UPDATE: The Mayor has provided the following response:

All Annapolitans were encouraged by the recent proposals for the Market
House, many of which were appealing at first blush.  All of us want to
see the Market House thriving once again as the centerpiece of our
community.

Several alderpersons expressed preferences about the various proposals
both privately and publicly.  However, there is a big difference between
an attractive proposal and a solid, legally binding agreement that
protects the interests of both parties.  Given the importance of the
Market House and its recent history of mismanagement, we cannot afford
to make rash or ill-informed decisions.

The City has neither settled on an operator for the Market House nor
have we commenced formal negotiations with any third party to do so.  We
are thoroughly examining the financial and legal aspects of prospective
arrangements in order to protect the City’s interests.

My two goals for the Market House remain for it to succeed as a
bustling hub of our community, and for the City’s interests to be
protected, if for whatever reason it does not work out.

Once the City administration successfully negotiates a lease or
agreement that offers the best opportunity for the Market House to
succeed while also protecting the City’s interests, I will then submit
it to the City Council for consideration.

Until such time as the City Council approves a long-term agreement, it
would be premature, speculative and wholly inaccurate for anyone to
claim that they are going to be the next long-term operator of the
Market House.  We are all eager to see progress being made on the Market
House, and as soon as there are concrete developments to report, the
City will make sure the public is fully informed.

Joshua J. Cohen, Mayor