Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

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COVER STORY Shelley Craft, owner of The Men’s Refinery BarberSpa, gives a haircut to Kenneth Gregory at her salon in downtown Augusta. ‘SKIMMING BY’ Downtown businesses whipsawed by COVID-19 pandemic Story by DAMON CLINE | Photos by MICHAEL HOLAHAN There are times when shopkeeper Jennifer Tinsley goes the whole day without so much as a phone call. “If I have days when there are no customers, I just have to hang out,” said Tinsley, owner of Field Botanicals, which sells natural- and cruelty-free cosmetics. “It’s never been so bad to where I had to shut down the business, but we’re just skimming by.” Most downtown businesses are in the same boat as Tinsley. With comparatively few people living in Augusta’s urban core, there is little need for most of the city’s consumers to make a special trip downtown, where the business mix is primarily bars, restaurants and niche retailers. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only scared off many potential customers, it has caused untold numbers of downtown office employees to work from home, reducing the weekday lunch and happyhour crowd even further. “Nothing beats that high-traffic office user,” said Parker Dye, a specialist in downtown real estate with Jordan Trotter Commercial Real Estate. And adding to the economic injury: There are no major conferences, conventions or trade shows on the calendar at the city’s convention center, so businesses can say goodbye to expense-account wielding professionals looking for good food and a good time. Luigi’s restaurant, an institution in downtown Augusta for 70 years, has been closed since mid-March. 8 | 1736magazine.com
Co-owner and general manager Penelope Ballas said it’s not worth the risk or the cost to open for only a handful of customers a day. The Italian and Greek eatery, she said, is too “old school” to start doing take-out or third-party delivery orders like other downtown restaurants. “I’m just trying to wait this out,” she said. “A lot of restaurants that went ahead and opened have closed back down again. Most of our employees are wanting to stay home; they’re putting their health over their paycheck.” Forecasts for the most unpredictable economic calamity to ever hit Augusta’s urban core are dire. Main Street America projects up to one-third of the nation’s 30.2 million small businesses are at risk of permanent closure as the coronavirus pandemic plods along. A survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses in the spring said six in 10 businesses could fold if the pandemic lasts until Labor Day. The federal Small Business Administration has said one-third of small businesses will close. When Margaret Woodard first heard the statistics, she “couldn’t sleep for three nights in a row.” Jennifer Tinsley uses small strips for perfume samples at the Field Botanicals store in downtown Augusta. “There is no playbook for this,” said Woodard, director of the Augusta Downtown Development Authority. Woodard’s organization and the Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau teamed up early in the summer to hire local marketing firm TranterGrey to produce a series of 30- and 60-second public service announcements featuring downtown employees following safety protocols as well as portraits of well-known downtown business owners. FACES OF DOWNTOWN David Long When supplies of hand sanitizers started disappearing from store shelves and warehouses, it didn’t take David Long very long to figure out he could help. After all, making alcohol is his day job. The owner of 2nd City Distilling Co. along the riverfront began shifting production from small batch whiskeys, vodkas and rum to pure alcohol for hand sanitizers for front-line health care workers. “With the small amount we can produce we decided to try our best to get it to essential workers and folks that are in the healthcare industries, the emergency responders,” Long said. Long produced more than 500 eightounce bottles a week. The distilling wasn’t a problem – it was getting ingredients such as glycerin to give the mixture a gel-like David Long, of 2nd City Distilling Co, holds some bottles of hand sanitizer he started making when supplies ran low early in the COVID-19 pandemic. [FILE/THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE] consistency. Long and his friend, Cal Bowie, started making alcohol in 2013 in Edgefield, S.C., as Carolina Moon Distillery. Long opened 2nd City Distilling Co. in downtown Augusta in early 2019. 1736magazine.com | 9
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BRIEFING By DAMON CLINE HITS & MISS
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T72 Sunday, August 23, 2020
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Downtown business owners try to keep smiling amid pandemic - 1736 Magazine, Summer 2020

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