Merchants Protest Renaming Market Street After King

Angered by a San Diego City Council decision to rename Market Street after slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., a group of merchants along the thoroughfare on Wednesday posted “Keep Market St.” placards in shop windows.

The campaign began one day after the City Council refused to reconsider its April 21 decision to rename the street after King.

Merchants, who plan to gather at a Market Street business this afternoon to plot what they will do next, say the name change will cost them money for reprinted stationary and other supplies bearing the names of their firms. In addition, some maintained the name swap is a slap at King because downtown sections of Market Street are a haven for prostitutes and drug dealers.

“If you’re going to honor someone, you don’t honor them with Skid Row,” said Rick Condon, co-owner of Union Restaurant Supply. “It’s terrible that they did this to the guy.”

Councilman William Jones, a supporter of the name change, said his office was deluged with telephone calls from persons identifying themselves as Market Street businessmen angry with the decision. Some of the callers, Jones said, were “offensive” and used profanity to make their point.

Nonetheless, Jones said it would “not be proper to second guess” the merchant’s reasons for asking that the street retain its original name.

“This whole thing has convinced me that focusing attention on these people will only cause more people like them to come out of the woodwork,” Jones said. “I don’t want to get in any sort of contest with them. I’m outnumbered.”

Several shop owners, meanwhile, were quick to insist that their opposition to renaming the street was not racist.

“It is not a racial situation as far as the merchants are concerned,” said Robert Smith, sales manager at AAA Sales International, a restaurant supply firm. “I wouldn’t care what they wanted to change the name to, I’d still oppose it.”

Smith said that merchants feel several other streets would have been more appropriate for the name change, among them Highway 94 and Imperial Avenue, where an annual parade is held honoring King.

Many of the shop owners complained that they were unaware the council was even considering the action because meeting notices were sent to property owners, who failed to tell the merchants who lease space along Market Street, a six-mile boulevard stretching from the shore of San Diego Bay to Encanto.

When the businessmen learned of the name change, which will take effect in about a year, several began circulating petitions. Earlier this week, the group delivered to the council a petition with more than 300 signatures of Market Street residents and merchants opposed to the name change.

On Tuesday, the group asked the council to reconsider its decision. The council, however, failed to muster the required six votes.