Harry Jaffe, The Examiner
2006-12-12 08:00:00.0
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WASHINGTON -

When the history of the Florida Avenue Market is written, and we celebrate the saving of the funky warehouse and wholesale district east of North Capital Street, we will thank an Italian and a Jew, which is appropriate, since the market got its start 75 years ago by ethnic businessmen, hawking poultry and bread.

Our heroes are D.C. Council Member David Catania and lawyer Paul Pascal. As for losers, we have the developers; even they might win in the end.

Last week, the D.C. Council passed a bill that seemed to spell the demise of the market. It gave developers a gift in the form of legislation to create a public-private partnership, whose goal would be to bulldoze the 24-acre home of the venerable market and replace it with the usual mix of spiffy new office buildings and chain stores and some affordable housing thrown in to appease the community and the politicians.

How would the developer get control of the land? Try to buy it or bring landowners into the deal, but eventually the land could be taken by the city under eminent domain.

Most of the market merchants were clueless. They are too busy supplying restaurants and shops with everything from chickens to pigs to cheese and novelties like flags and sweatshirts. Besides, many speak Spanish or Korean and don’t understand how a city could swipe their property.

Enter Paul Pascal. As a young lawyer, he married Brenda Kulker, whose father ran a poultry supply business from the Florida Avenue Market. Back in those days, Italians, Jews and Greeks turned the former military base into a mecca for good food.

Says Pascal: “It was the breadbasket of the city.”

Pascal started his law office in the warehouse district in 1966. He’s moved to Capitol Hill, and his father-in-law has passed away, though the Kulker family still owns property in the market. But he has stayed in touch with the merchants. When he got wind of the plan by developer Sang Oh Choi to replace the market, he helped create a property owner’s association.

And he pleaded his case to council members in letters protesting the “emergency legislation” by outgoing Council Member Vincent Orange to remake the market. Choi contributed to Orange’s unsuccessful mayoralty campaign.

He asked to then “take a longer look and fully debate the issue.”

David Catania was reading his mail in preparation for the hearing. “Paul Pascal was the only person who reached out,” he tells me.

He read the development plan.

“There was an element of ‘we know best, you are little people, we can get away with it,’” he says.

So Catania crafted a poison pill. He inserted into the legislation a clause that requires at least 50 percent of the land owners to sign onto the plan — before it can move forward.

“It’s a way to force everyone to the table early in the process,” he says.

It’s also a way to make sure the market — and a hunk of our city’s character — survives.

Harry Jaffe has been covering the Washington area since 1985. E-mail him at hjaffe@washingtonian.com.