By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
While major companies like Walmart and Home Depot have remained open throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Main Street businesses are in a struggle to survive. They are still awaiting their opportunity to welcome customers back into their stores, but when they do, it won’t be the same.
The Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce is helping those Main Street and Boardwalk businesses get ready for the new reality of social distancing, but there remains a considerable amount of frustration.
In Atlantic County, County Executive Dennis Levinson and Freeholder Chairman Frank D. Formica have appealed to the governor to ease restrictions on small businesses.
“It’s surely going to look different than any other summer we’ve had,” chamber Executive Director Michele Gillian said last week after Gov. Phil Murphy announced the Jersey shore would be open for business on Memorial Day weekend, albeit with limitations. “There are a lot of challengers ahead, but I think having the beach and Boardwalk open is a good step forward to bring the summer season. Small businesses are being challenged this year on how they will survive. I’m going to use the word survive because for a lot of retail locations, curbside is good for some, but curbside isn’t helpful for many.”
Under the governor’s latest change to the pandemic restrictions, non-essential retailers are now allowed to be open for curbside pickup, but customers are not allowed in their stores. “I think retail is going to be challenged to exist this summer,” Gillian said.
She pointed out restaurants have adapted to takeout-only and are doing the right things for when patrons will be allowed inside, but they also are waiting to hear what the new limits will be to prevent the spread of the coronavirus this summer as crowds return to the shore.
Gillian said there remain challenges for businesses in addition to retailers, such as miniature golf courses, arcades and amusement parks. The governor hasn’t yet addressed them.
“I think there is a high anxiety right now when the governor is going to lift the stay-at-home order and maybe give some hope for some of these businesses to open sooner rather than later,” she said.
In a letter to the governor dated Monday, May 18, Levinson and Formica wrote thanked him for lifting some restrictions, but said, “Your decision to allow curbside pick-up only for all non-essential retail businesses, however, fails to accommodate many businesses for which curbside pick-up is impractical and unfeasible. Smaller, mom and pop businesses and specialty shops will still be unable to conduct business.
“While this pandemic has taken a huge toll on business, the small businesses have felt it most. They have been prohibited from opening to sell many of the same goods as Walmart, Target, Home Depot and others that have been deemed essential and remain open, and without curbside service restrictions. It has never been more difficult for them to compete with the national chains and big box stores than it is now with their doors shut and their curbs empty,” they wrote.
“We believe the small businesses can be just as responsible, if not more so, than their big box competitors. It is far easier for them to enforce social distancing, use of face masks, and hygiene and sanitation protocols just by virtue of the smaller numbers of customers and employees.
“We urge you to provide them the same opportunities by reopening retail businesses in time for the Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial kickoff to the summer season. Their futures may depend on these next few months. Without the ability to capitalize on Memorial Day business, their already uphill battle becomes far more daunting,” Levinson and Formica wrote..
Getting businesses
ready for
the new reality
The Chamber of Commerce has been meeting weekly with downtown merchants and Boardwalk merchants and leaders of the other sectors such as hospitality and Realtors. Gillian said they are making sure they are current with the latest health rules, sending out information to the businesses as soon as they receive it, and helping all the businesses prepare for the six-foot social distancing, ordering stickers for all the stores.
“We are really preparing. The city is providing masks and we’ll have hand sanitizers throughout the city. At the Welcome Center, if you forgot your mask, we’re going to have one for you. We are preparing for that,” she said, adding there won’t be a charge for masks.
Gillian said social distancing will work if everyone takes responsibility, from the merchants and their employees to the residents, second-home owners and tourists.
“We want … everyone who comes to Ocean City to be responsible. We’re going to do that through an educational process. We’re going to have brochures, we’re going to have announcements downtown and on the Boardwalk. We have the Ocean City app which will have health updates, and geo-sensing when you walk into certain areas downtown, you’ll know to please be respectful of social distancing, wear your mask. On the Boardwalk, I think it was ‘no mask, no shirt, no service.’
“We’re really trying to think outside the box to make sure we are taking all health issues into consideration, but we really need the partnership from the community as well,” she said.
They also need New Jersey’s administration to listen.
“We’re trying to help small businesses but we really need our leaders in Trenton, especially the governor, to hear that it’s not equal,” she said. “For us, in a tourism-driven town that only has so many months to make the majority of their income, we are not being heard from.”
“Someone mentioned to me today, ‘how about we close all those big box stores and we shop on Main Street?’ I thought that’s a great idea. Let the tables turn,” Gillian said. “I don’t wish anybody anything but good will, but it seems like we’re being excluded.”
“I don’t know if that’s registering in Trenton that you can go to Home Depot or Target or all these other stores but you can’t go to your local store downtown that is usually a mom and pop family organization that feeds many family members who live in your community. That is upsetting,” she said.
She said Realtors have started their long-term rentals and soon will be opening up short-term rentals. Hotels, she added, will be open with 60 percent maximum occupancy on June 1.
“There are a lot of good things happening to move forward, but there are still so many restrictions and so many unknowns. That is, for sure, a challenge,” Gillian said.
While there remains hope for a solid summer season, she said the small businesses have already lost so much.
“Since November they’ve invested in infrastructure, retailers bringing in product,” Gillian said. They’ve invested thinking they were opening in March. They have not been open. They’ve been shut down. And shut down is no money coming in. Even though it’s not full-blown (season), we’ve seen traffic on weekends in Ocean City Thursday through Monday. Our second-home owners and homeowners … have become really good partners with the downtown and boardwalk.
Those long weekends were good for those businesses last year in March, April and May, but now there is nothing come in. All the indicators were for a strong summer so they invested in their businesses, then COVID-19 struck and they haven’t been able to open.
“We were hoping we would have a good summer again so I think a lot of people took the opportunity to invest in their business,” she said. “I just hope the governor does this in time so we don’t lose small businesses.”