Tag Archives: festival market

The vision—where is it?

Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation, the operator since 2011 of the city-owned Faneuil Hall Marketplace, has been in recent tussles with its merchants, pushcarts, street performers and history-loving Bostonians. After public outcry and several meetings, some matters may be worked out.

The latest round occurred last week when the BRA board, showing little knowledge and only a smattering of interest, approved Ashkenazy’s “vision” for FHM.

The BRA should look at Ashkenazy’s plans more closely and with history in mind. Right now there is little evidence this company understands the market’s early retail success or how festival markets work. It has presented no evidence it can entice Bostonians to return to the market they flocked to in the 1970s and ‘80s.

According to Barry Lustig, Ashkenazy’s executive vice president, the company’s “vision” is to continue to attract tourists, 85 percent of whom visit the market. Plans for a hotel, a compatible use that would operate mostly on upper floors, ought to help increase tourist traffic.

Lustig wants to increase total traffic from 22 million annual visitors to 30 million, so part of his “vision” is to lure back Bostonians, whose interest in the historic marketplace has faded.

BRA board member Ted Landsmark asked Lustig, “What’s the thing that would get Bostonians there?

“Celebrating the architecture,” said Lustig. He waxed poetic about the architecture. Is architecture going to lure Bostonians who already have a surfeit of 19th century buildings to enjoy?

Landsmark did not follow up.

Not that Lustig’s plans for the architecture aren’t good. He plans to light the buildings strategically and reveal the interesting interior walls of Quincy Market now hidden behind refrigerators. But it’s hard to see how good lighting and revealing the walls will entice us to spend time at the market.

What he didn’t mention in answer to Landsmark’s question was that earlier in his presentation he had described ping-pong tables and other games he thought would draw Bostonians. A good park, in other words.

At the public meeting in early July he was even more specific. He described Bryant Park, which he said was a marvel for the nation.

“This property has the opportunity to be second only to Bryant Park,” he went on.

Faneuil Hall Marketplace second to something in New York?

To a park?

Oooooooo!

Did he notice the market is adjacent to an actual park, the Greenway, modeled to some extent on Bryant Park?

He kept talking about a park, but what Bostonians want is a good marketplace.

It was just that in the beginning. If they really are interested in history, as Lustig says they are, Ashkenazy should look at the market’s early success.

In 1976 and throughout much of the 1980s, FHM was quirky, local, vibrant and fun. Bostonians thronged to the place. There was no need for ping-pong because it had retail luster.

The Bear Necessities was probably the best of the best. Its teddy bears, priced from $5 to $500, had something for everyone. Its local owners, Tim and Nancy Atkins, knew retail entertainment. The bears’ names—Scarlett O’Beara, Douglas Bearbanks, Bearishnikov. Those alone made you want to check out the merchandise.

In 1982 the shop held a Bring Your Own Bear contest that drew 150 entries and many spectators. The shop drew children and adults, locals and tourists, who came upon it with delight and surprise.

“The retail was definitely unique,” Tim Atkins remembers of the early Faneuil Hall Marketplace. He recalled the Celtic Weavers, Pave Real, The Boxes, a scrimshaw place and Have-a-Heart—independent stores with merchandise unavailable elsewhere. Secretary of State John Kerry even had a store called Kilvert & Forbes, with hot-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies. Many of these independent stores were successful.

Then in the late 1980s, when some of the independents faltered, the operator replaced them with chains. Bostonians stopped going. Even the chains had problems. Atkins recalls a national store selling umbrellas with butterfly decorations. A woman loved them. Her husband said, “Let’s wait. We can get this back home in the Scottsdale mall.”

About the same time as the chains came in, the Atkinses closed the Bear Necessities. “We expanded beyond our business acumen,” Tim Atkins said. “We did it too fast and didn’t have the business experience to manage other stores and a mail-order catalog.”

Nevertheless, they never had any problem with sales at FHM. “We had a great response from customers,” he said.

The downside, Atkins acknowledged, is that local, quirky, vibrant and fun retailers sometimes lack experience and can run into financial difficulties.

This is where an expert, hard-working operator would add value—shepherding retailers with unique ideas into businesses where sales go through the roof.

Hearing Ashkenazy’s plans as they stand now, Bostonians will yawn. Sephora—a dime a dozen. Uniqlo may entice a few teenagers.

If Ashkenazy would actually study the history they say they revere, they would find retail models for play, entertainment and attraction for Bostonians. It’s called imagination, outreach and true retail skill. It’s in the history they say they want to re-create.

The more things change . . .

At Faneuil Hall Marketplace, an out-of-town manager doesn’t understand how to run a Boston business. Local businesses are ousted to make room for chains. The manager believes the pushcart vendors, with their dubious tchotchkes, bring down the tone of the place. The vendors, however, accuse the manager of shutting them out of decision making and imposing unsustainable restrictions on them. Accommodating tourists sometimes conflicts with attracting locals.

These conditions could describe Boston’s festival market at this point, as it was revealed at a Boston City Council hearing in December. On the one side was the poised and articulate Kristen Keefe, general manager of the marketplace, who described plans for the market’s renovation. On the other were a pushcart vendor, a sandwich shop owner who is being pushed out, and Jane Thompson, who with her husband, Benjamin, envisioned and designed the repurposed market in 1972. Thompson decried the mall atmosphere of a market she said was formed with the public trust, since the BRA and the City of Boston own the buildings.

But the first paragraph actually describes Faneuil Hall Marketplace when it first opened, according to Deborah M. Hanley, whose retail development and marketing company, Todreas/Hanley, worked with the original leasing team and helped put in place such local purveyors as Hebert Candies, the Bear Necessities, start-up restaurants, and the old meat and cheese purveyors who first occupied Quincy Market, the central building.

Hanley said her company was the only Boston-based firm working with the Rouse Company, a shopping mall developer based in Baltimore. Within a year it was clear the market was a success, she said, but it had already started to change. By the time the South Market opened, chains were replacing local businesses. Tensions between the pushcart vendors and the management company were constant. Eventually the Rouse Company got rid of the old cheese and meat purveyors, who weren’t bringing in enough money, and moved in fast-food places. Hanley was disappointed with the ultimate result, which became more like a traditional shopping mall. “It’s always been about the big bucks,” she said. “There’s no reason to go down there.”

And Bostonians claim they don’t go to Faneuil Hall Marketplace. I confess I sometimes do. Once in awhile, we’ll meet at a restaurant. Our grandchildren love the street performers and the ice cream shops, located a short walk from the Greenway’s carousel.

Hanley, though, points out that her daughter, Amanda, 26, does not meet her friends at Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Instead they go to the Back Bay or Central Square.

Keefe said at the hearing she wanted to attract more Bostonians. But judging from the pictures she showed, it is not ALL Bostonians. The architects’ renderings show the renovated rotunda of the Quincy Market building with a bar featuring up-to-date architecture and young, fashionable people Amanda’s age.

Luring Bostonians back to the market doesn’t seem to be the only goal. Ashkenazy plans to install a small hotel along a side street that could use some vitality. Not a bad idea, but it will bring more tourists, not locals.

Quincy Market, which is the middle building, does look dowdy, and Ashkenazy’s refurbishment is welcome. The pushcart vendors accused Keefe of planning to eliminate them, since architectural plans showed no pushcarts. Keefe claimed that was not the case. They said she was secretive, deceptive and refused to let them participate in a planned redesign of their carts. She sidestepped these accusations at the hearing, and did not answer emailed questions for this column, so maybe they are right.

Keefe’s plan for the market seems to be to increase the number of chain merchants. Uniqlo, for example, an international chain featuring cheap clothing, will expand into a second floor space in Quincy Market.

Increasing the number of chains could be risky, said Jesse Baerkahn, a retail specialist. Local is fashionable in more than just food. He said the best idea would be to find businesses “that are unique to Boston and offer something you cannot get anywhere else.”

But taking that route has problems too. Chains pay their bills. Keefe reported that 40 percent of the merchants at Faneuil Hall Marketplace are in arrears. Keefe did not credibly explain why her company has allowed so many merchants to get behind on lease payments. Nor was it clear why the merchants could not afford their rent.

After all, apparently Faneuil Hall Marketplace attracts more visitors than the Great Wall of China. Travel and Leisure magazine reports that Faneuil Hall Marketplace is the eighth most visited attraction in the United States with 15 million visitors. Wikipedia says it is the seventh most visited attraction with 20 million visitors.

Whatever the number, and whether Bostonians go there or not, it is probably a good idea not to mess too much with success.