NYC Businesses Already Hit by Covid Now Must Reopen Amid Rubble

(Bloomberg) -- New York City’s reopening is days away. After months of lockdown, businesses were prepared for a marathon slog back to normal. Now, after days of rioting, many are crawling just to reach the start line.

Peaceful crowds have gathered in each of the five boroughs for the past five days to protest police killings of black people. Looters followed. They have broken windows and taken goods from small bodegas, icons of America’s commercial capital, and most everything in between.

The death of George Floyd, videotaped as a Minneapolis police officer pinned his neck with a knee, set off protests in scores of U.S. cities and abroad. Police responded aggressively, beating and arresting demonstrators and filling streets with tear gas from California to Washington, D.C.

In New York, after a fresh spasm of violence, the streets were carpeted with shattered glass Tuesday. Stores throughout Midtown and downtown, the once-thriving centers of commerce and pleasure, were sacked. Shop owners and managers wearily prepared to welcome customers who might keep their stores alive and feed their families amid a plague that has killed more than 21,000 New Yorkers and thrown millions into the unemployment lines.

At a bodega on Avenue B, Juan Ignacio Mendez postponed opening from 7 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. to clear debris and remove boards that covered the windows top to bottom. That’s been his daily exercise since Friday -- board up overnight to prepare for protests and remove the fortifications in the morning.

“It’s exhausting,” Mendez said. “Am I angry? Yes, I’m angry.”

Mendez, 53, said the emotional toll of the protests and the pandemic has been more severe than the financial toll. He’s been able to keep the store open since early May, serving a maximum of two customers at a time.

“There’s not much to be looking forward to,” he said. “I was looking forward to June so much.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio said at a Tuesday news conference that he still plans to begin reopening New York City on June 8, unrest or no unrest.

“It’s hard to believe that just a few days ago, all we were talking about was the pandemic,” the mayor said. “The pandemic is still there and we must address that. We need to reopen this city.”

Governor Andrew Cuomo said the mayor had underestimated the threat, and having 8,000 officers on the streets and an 11 p.m. curfew was inadequate. The city of more than 8 million is extending the curfew through Sunday -- and starting it at 8 p.m.

Helana Natt, executive director of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, said looters have been taking advantage of the virus-induced shutdown.

If “the retailers were open and had their employees back, the people that are in the community, that are peaceful protesters would surround their businesses that are open and would prevent the looters that are getting in,” Natt said.

A walk downtown Tuesday morning showed businesses battered into comas: The windows of the Red Lion bar on Bleecker Street still wish pedestrians a happy St. Patrick’s Day. Across the street, New University Pen & Stationery was boarded up and locked shut. Helicopters churned the air overhead. Drills and hammers echoed through the West Village as retailers and restaurants secured their glass fronts.

It wasn’t just brick-and-mortar businesses that face an uncertain path. Bhairavi Desai, head of the New York Taxi Drivers Alliance, said her members have been ravaged by disease and, in many cases, usurious debt.

“I’ve been worried about once people get back to work and look for each other, and realize many of their co-workers are gone,” she said. “The majority of drivers are immigrants, and it’s a tight community. The uncertainty and grief are going to hit many drivers when the economy reopens.”

Grayers, a clothing store at Bleecker and Seventh Avenue, closed its doors March 13. Those doors now are being covered with sheets of wood, a roughly $1,000 expense, said manager Stacy Georgiou.

“We just can’t wait to go back to business,” she said. “We may be out of business.”

The New York Police Department arrested 700 people Monday night, said Commissioner Dermot Shea. While the vast majority of people in the streets vented peacefully, some attacked any business at hand.

It was a common impulse across America.

Dan Fitzpatrick, chief executive officer of Indiana-based Quality Dining Inc., operates about 220 Burger King and Chili’s restaurants with 9,000 workers in seven states as a franchisee. The company has been “deeply unprofitable for a couple of months.”

Now, he’s having to close early because of curfews and had more than $100,000 damage done to a Burger King in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Friday. But he boarded up the shattered windows and remained open, and he’s vowing to weather protests as he did the pandemic.

“You figure it out, you tough through it and you just deal with it,” he said.

In San Leandro, California, Carlos Hidalgo’s Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership was looted Sunday night. Overwhelmed police couldn’t help, and Hidalgo told his employees to flee. Someone crashed a car through the front window.

“You couldn’t stop them, they were like ants, they cut all the fences they were crawling in here,” Hidalgo said by phone. At least 64 cars were taken, 20 of which he’s since recovered because they have trackers on them. Another 30 were damaged.

In Los Angeles, the central Hollywood neighborhood was quietly cleaning up Tuesday morning. A Rite Aid drug store and Pavilions supermarket had been looted the night before. A Starbucks coffee shop and Chipotle restaurant had broken windows.

Protests spread across America’s second-largest city over the past four days, beginning downtown but moving to affluent areas including Beverly Hills and Santa Monica over the weekend. Some business people put signs on their property saying “black owned” or “minority owned” to discourage vandalism. One Mexican restaurant on Melrose Avenue had Black Lives Matter posters in its windows and it appeared to escape damage.

Looters in Los Angeles have been working in teams, driving up in cars without license plates and using social media to communicate about the locations of police and stores that they can swarm.

“When you see the outrage on the streets and the attack on retail establishments, it’s because of the vastly profound economic inequality that exists in the country,” said Anthony Thompson, a professor of clinical law and a founding faculty director of the Center of Race, Inequality and the Law at New York University. “That rage gets focused in the retail sector because of that inequality.”

Macy’s 2.2 million square feet at its Herald Square flagship make it the largest department store in the U.S. Looters invaded it Monday night.

“NYPD responded to the scene and damage has been limited,” said Blair Rosenberg, a Macy’s spokeswoman. “We are grateful none of our employees have been injured. As it relates to re-opening, we’re taking it day by day.”

President Donald Trump, who has seized on the protests to recast himself as a paladin of order, said in tweet Tuesday afternoon that the incursion was reason to bring soldiers into the city.

In the morning, a 53-year-old construction worker named Scott Corria was drilling up a ribbon of plywood around the store. He had started putting up the 8-foot-tall pieces Sunday, and now he was repairing some that had been smashed.

“We had the whole thing wrapped,” he said. “They broke through.”

A man in Patagonia shorts pulled up on a bike. John Germain, 55, worked for Lehman Brothers as a banker from 1998 to 2008 and had come from his home in Midtown to check on a favorite place. “It’s a vintage store,” he said. “I wanted to see how it fared through the night.”

“I understand why they’re angry, but I don’t understand the violence,” Germain said. “Everyone got on edge because of coronavirus, and the next thing you know, you just need one more excuse for social unrest.”

By 2:30 p.m., a new layer of plywood near Macy’s doors partially covered graffiti that once read: “Black power.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.