Patricia Buxton, a candlemaker, recently received an email inviting her to apply to sell her merchandise at D.C.’s annual Downtown Holiday Market, a popular outdoor event where her past patrons have included Vice President Harris.
Two hours after getting the notice from the market manager, a man she had been dealing with since 2021, Buxton received a second invitation to apply for a booth at the same market — this one from a company she did not know. “I thought it was a scam,” she said.
Unbeknownst to Buxton and other vendors, the management of the market had become the focus of an intense struggle between its longtime operator, Diverse Markets Management, and the DowntownDC Business Improvement District, the nonprofit organization that co-produces the event.
“It feels like two parents are getting divorced and the kids have to pick a side,” Buxton said. “I’m so confused.”
The holiday market typically runs from mid-November until just before Christmas, drawing tens of thousands of shoppers to a two-block stretch of F Street NW outside the National Portrait Gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Exhibitors sell everything from original works of art to photography to crafts and antique maps. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) cut the ribbon to open the 2023 market.
The market’s importance as a regional attraction has grown in recent years as downtown seeks to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, which emptied office buildings and hurt foot traffic at restaurants and shops.
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Diverse Markets Management is a local company that has overseen the market since its 2005 inception, leasing booths to 70 or so vendors, supervising day-to-day operations and acquiring the permits to close the streets.
For the first time this year, DowntownDC BID decided to hold a competition to determine who would oversee the festival, a contest that Diverse Markets Management lost to the Makers Show, a company that puts on markets in Boston and Brooklyn.
Michael Berman, president of Diverse Markets Management, is refusing to relinquish control of the market. He said in an interview that he is in the process of getting the necessary permits for the event and contacting prospective vendors. On Thursday, his attorney, Bryan Latham, wrote a letter to the BID demanding that it not contact anyone from Berman’s vendor list.
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Gerren Price, DowntownDC’s president, said in written responses to questions from The Washington Post that the BID decided to hold the competition to manage the market because of what he described as “community and stakeholder feedback around the declining quality” of the market.
Price said the BID chose the Makers Show because the company plans to expand the market’s size while offering “a reduced cost to rent booths.” He said the Makers Show “is bringing in a new comprehensive holiday market strategy that will enhance the market.”
Asked to specify the amount in rent reductions, Sarah Epelman of BerlinRosen, a public-relations firm representing DowntownDC, said in an email that “we are happy to share more detailed information after we publicly launch the new plan with The Makers Show.” She declined to answer further questions.
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Berman said the BID has never shared complaints with him about the quality of the market’s operation. He questioned why the group would seek to replace his D.C.-based business with one that has worked in New York and Massachusetts. He said he employs 40 people from the area.
“This is my life’s work, and they’re stealing it,” said Berman, an artist whose company has managed other outdoor markets, including the one at Eastern Market. “I created all the value.”
Berman became involved with the market in 2005, when the BID asked him for help recruiting vendors. “He had a connection with the crafts people,” said Richard Bradley, the BID’s former president who led the organization from 1997 to 2014. “And it continued year after year. It was a comfortable relationship, a cooperative relationship. He would secure the vendors and we would do the marketing.”
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Berman said Price in December first mentioned the possibility of seeking bidders for managing the market. In March, at Price’s invitation, Berman bid on the contract. On April 29, Price wrote him a letter saying that the BID “decided not to move forward” with Berman’s company.
“We appreciate your contributions to the Downtown Holiday Market for the past 19 years,” Price wrote, adding that the BID hoped to “work with you in other capacities.”
It was at the end of May when Berman learned from a vendor he knew that the Makers Show was inviting sellers to apply for booths. As part of his contract with the BID, Berman said his company owns the vendor list, and he questioned whether DowntownDC was violating the terms of their arrangement.
Price, in his emailed response to The Post’s questions, said that the BID has not used Berman’s list and that the Makers Show has its own contacts with vendors.
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Buxton said she is applying for a booth with Berman’s company only because she has a relationship with him and his staff and she feels “very safe and taken care of.” She said the money she earns from the holiday market “keeps the lights on for the following year. We have come to rely on the revenue.”
Doug Abbey, a vendor who has sold D.C.-themed designs at the market since 2016, said he was also confused on May 31 when he received Berman’s annual application to exhibit at the market, then two hours later got a separate application from the Makers Show.
Abbey said he’s not opposed to change and the possibility that another manager could be competent. For the moment, he’s trying to understand how two different managers can oversee the market at the same time — which he says is “impossible” unless “they’re operating in a parallel universe.”
“We don’t know who the proper host is,” he said. “Who do we contract with?”
