They hope summer season won’t be delayed
By BILL BARLOW/Special to the Sentinel
OCEAN CITY – On a Saturday afternoon in April, cars line up along the curb at Ninth Street. Barricades block the nearby parking lots, as well as the Boardwalk entrances. The Boardwalk itself stood empty.
Dave Evans, a Manco and Manco employee, waits behind a wooden barricade, ready to take pizza orders and deliver them to the waiting cars. When he poses for a news photo, he makes a point of showing his gloved hands.
On spring afternoons, the popular pizzeria often has lines of pedestrians stretching across the Boardwalk. The curbside pickup and delivery service have allowed the restaurant to remain in operation during the extraordinary measures undertaken to slow the spread of COVID-19, including shutting access to the beach and boardwalk.
The Manco and Manco website states the Somers Point location and one of the locations on the Ocean City Boardwalk remain open, and asks customers to order over the phone and pay with credit cards. The service cannot come close to the business the restaurant would normally do, but it is something, Evans said.
“It’s not setting the world on fire, but people seem to appreciate it,” he said, as a fellow staff member loaded a stack of pizza boxes into the back of a waiting vehicle.
Grocery stores, pharmacies and other businesses declared essential are permitted to remain open under Gov. Phil Murphy’s March 9 declaration of a public health emergency. Under the state rules, restaurants may offer curbside food pickup or delivery.
As the number of confirmed cases in New Jersey continued to climb sharply, Mayor Jay Gillian ordered the beaches and Boardwalk closed to the public, stating that not everyone was taking the health directives seriously.
“With the weather getting warmer, it will only get worse. I fully understand the impact that this will have on Ocean City, but I will always err on the side of caution,” Gillian wrote in a statement posted to the city website.
In the short term, the order has closed businesses the length of the ‘walk, at a time when many merchants count on the first influx of cash after a lean winter. The long-term effect is not yet known. A lot will depend on how long the crisis continues.
“There’s a lot to be determined. This is a lot different than a hurricane,” said Wes Kazmarck, the president of the Ocean City Boardwalk Merchants Association. “With a hurricane, you kind of know what you’ve go to do to get yourself back up and operational. This is something we’ve never seen before.”
The 6th Street Pizza and Grill is also offering takeout, and some businesses continue to offer mail-order sales, including the Fudge Kitchen, Shriver’s Salt Water Taffy and Johnson’s Popcorn, according to Michele Gillian, the executive director of the Ocean City Chamber of Commerce. She is also married to the mayor.
Most of the other Boardwalk businesses are shut. Most are family-owned businesses that often operate on a narrow margin each year.
“It’s a beautiful day today. I couldn’t help thinking about it. We’d have a full house and how well the businesses would do this week,” she said. The Easter holiday is often a busy time on the Boardwalk.
The chamber’s Welcome Center is closed to the public, but she remains at work. Much of her time is spent working with business owners on how to apply for the various programs included in the $2.2- trillion federal stimulus package that’s supposed to cushion the blow to the American economy. Reports state New Jersey is in line for $3.3 billion of that, but that is well short of the $20 billion Murphy has said is needed.
Further complicating matters, Michele Gillian said, the programs aimed at keeping paychecks flowing to employees and businesses afloat look at the previous month’s business, not a year ago at this time, putting seasonal businesses at a disadvantage.
“It’s really quite difficult. We’re hoping that Memorial Day is the big, big kickoff,” she said. “Hopefully we can come out with an OK summer.”
She said business owners on the Boardwalk and throughout town always spend the winter getting ready, with amusement parks maintaining rides and installing new ones, shops planning their product lines, buying merchandise and updating their stock.
Kazmarck, who owns the Surf Mall, said businesses continue to prepare for the summer. This may be the first time he’s completely prepared before opening. Owners are also taking this time to look after long-neglected projects.
“I’m building a website. It’s something that was long overdue,” he said. “It’s better than doing nothing.”
Even businesses that can remain open are doing so with reduced staff and hours. Becky Juzwiak, the vice president of Johnson’s Popcorn, said she decided to stop offering pickup.
“We really don’t want people to come out of their house for a non-essential need,” she said. The long-running business is fulfilling remote orders for Easter, and she said she is grateful people continue to order the product.
“It’s obviously not what this time of year would normally be,” she said, but she’s glad to be able to continue operating. “A lot of our friends are not even open.”
The business has enacted new procedures for staff, but she said they have not been difficult to put in place. Those working with food always wore gloves, washed their hands “incessantly” and disinfected surfaces regularly. Now, they also wear masks at work and keep the recommended six feet of social distance between people.
“I think everybody in Ocean City and elsewhere is really just trying to do what they can. I don’t know anybody who is not taking this seriously,” Juzwiak said. “The number one thing I’m worried about is my people. That’s it, period. The rest of the stuff we’ll be able to figure out.”
New Jersey’s first confirmed case of COVID-19 was documented in early March. Since then, there have been more than 41,000 cases confirmed, even with the strict social distance rules in place.
Kazmarck sees a possibility of a strong summer, because people throughout the region will be ready for some fresh air and a change of scenery and may not be eager to board an airplane. It will depend on when the restrictions lift.
“We certainly hope it’s by Memorial Day. Fingers crossed, that’s still on the table,” he said. “We’ve been able to recover from bad springs before.”
But if the businesses still can’t open as June rolls around, then it becomes economic survival mode, he said. Worse, however, would be to open things up too soon, and see restrictions re-imposed as cases rise again.
“We don’t want to rush it,” he said. “I think we all believe we’re going to overcome this.”