For decades, the Adams Morgan Farmers Market has occupied the plaza at the corner of 18th Street and Columbia Road NW. This year, though, the plaza will remain empty — and the market is being pushed to another space a block away.

Truist Bank, which owns the plaza, informed organizers of the long-running farmers market earlier this month that it was terminating the agreement that allowed them to use the space every Saturday from May through December.

“We have enjoyed our working relationship with you,” wrote David Crosby, a vice-president with the bank, in a brief letter to the market’s organizers, which cited no specific reason for the decision to end the agreement that has lasted almost five decades.

In recent years the fate of the privately-owned plaza has been in limbo. In 2016, the bank moved to sell the triangular-shaped lot to a local developer for construction of a residential building. The proposal has prompted pushback from some neighbors, and a lawsuit in which a pair of community groups argued that an agreement dating back to the mid-1970s prevented the bank from using the land for anything but a public space. That lawsuit was dismissed in January, seemingly clearing the way for the sale, though the groups appealed the ruling last month.

In an email to DCist/WAMU, Kyle Tarrance, a spokesman for Truist, said the delayed development deal spurred the decision to end the use agreement with the farmers market. “[O]ur agreement with the farmers market expired on Dec. 31, 2020. In light of the pending sale of the property, we were unable to accommodate and host the events moving forward,” he wrote.

In a letter to Adams Morgan residents on Tuesday, Mike Tabor and Esther Siegel, the organizers of the market and owners of the Licking Creek Bend Farm in Pennsylvania, said the plaza’s owner (before Truist, it was SunTrust) had long been “supportive and even enthusiastic” of the weekly market. That seemed to change this year, they wrote, starting with a delay and eventual cancellation of the agreement allowing the market to use the plaza.

“We have made no secret about our respect for the community members who are trying to preserve the Plaza as the ‘heart’ of Adams Morgan. It breaks our hearts that the bank does not respect the history of your community and the bank’s historical commitment to the community,” wrote Tabor and Siegel.

“It also is painful to watch a developer’s [seeming] disregard for the interests and concerns of a community. Particularly the elimination of public space for profit and to no benefit of the community. Especially now, the lessons we are all learning from the pandemic about how critical public, open space is to all of us,” they added. “We hope the developer will reconsider its plans and preserve the Plaza for the community (and of course it can be ‘improved’). How wonderful would that be!”

Tabor and Siegel wrote that the market is likely to relocated to Unity Plaza one block to the east, a plot of public space across the street from The Line hotel. The expect to hold their first market of the season on June 5. Still, they expressed frustration over being pushed out of their home of 49 years.

“The question is why is the bank behaving as it is,” they wrote. “To that end, we applaud the tireless efforts being made by various community groups and individuals to answer that question that will hopefully lead to the preservation of the Plaza.”