The D.C. government will invest $1 million to replace Eastern Market’s North Hall roof simultaneously with the restoration of the historic South Hall, which was gutted by fire nearly 15 months ago.
Minkoff Construction, the same company charged with rebuilding the South Hall roof in the aftermath of the April 30, 2007, three-alarm blaze, will extend its work to the North Hall, under a revised deal worth an additional $767,000.
The $950,000 South Hall roof work is scheduled for completion this month, according to a revised schedule from the D.C. Office of Property Management, which is overseeing the work.
“It’s 100 years old and it’s slate and it lasts a long time, but it’s near the end of its useful life span,” said Bill Rice, OPM spokesman, of the North Hall roof.
The pace of Eastern Market’s total reconstruction has been slow but steady, observers say. Forney Enterprises is responsible for the bulk of the interior work, under an $8.1 million contract approved by the council earlier this year, but that effort has hardly begun.
Mayor Adrian Fenty pledged last summer to reopen the historic market within 18 to 24 months. Vendors, meanwhile, are operating out of a temporary shelter, dubbed East Hall, on the grounds of Hine Junior High School across Seventh Street Southeast.
In a statement, OPM Director Robin-Eve Jasper said she is “proud of the steady, on-target progress we’re making to bring Eastern Market back by next summer.”
“This is a historic building, and there’s a lot of stuff that has to be done that isn’t business as usual like other kinds of building repairs,” said Donna Scheeder of the Eastern Market Community Advisory Committee. “It’s a complicated job, but so far, so good.”
The 135-year-old market was ravaged by fire on the same day the Georgetown Neighborhood Library was gutted by another three-alarm blaze.
The library fire was blamed on subcontractors, but the cause of the market fire remains unclear.
Ken Jarboe, a Capitol Hill advisory neighborhood commissioner, described the progress of Eastern Market renovations as “slow but sure.”
“I think they’re relatively still on track, but it’s still going slower than we’d like it to,” Jarboe said. “We would have liked everything to have been done yesterday.”
