B4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 , 2020
their homes instead of those near
office buildings. In an area
known as NoMa, for N orth of
Massachusetts Avenue, t here
have been no permanent clo-
sures and four new openings,
according to its business im-
provement district. And in
Georgetown, where dozens of
clothing stores have shuttered,
there are also new signs of life.
Call Your Mother Deli, a trendy
local bagel shop, opened its doors
in late July to lines of socially
distanced customers spilling out
of its new bright pink storefront
in Georgetown.
Over the past five months, the
deli has added three new loca-
tions and doubled its pre-pan-
demic revenue. And its signature
bacon, egg and cheese with spicy
honey bagel? Almost always sold
out.
“Growing during a pandemic
sounded crazy before we did it
and then it worked,” said Andrew
Dana, co-owner of Call Your
Mother Deli, adding that his
business model built on comfort
food and embedding in residen-
tial neighborhoods has proved
advantageous throughout the
pandemic.
Dana recalled one day in late
July when he drove from one
booming storefront to another,
hardly believing the number of
orders flowing in that day. He
stopped at a red light and looked
at his fiancee and business part-
ner, Daniela Moreira, smiling.
“I guess people still want ba-
gels,” he said.
[email protected]employed by global real estate
firm Hines, oversees CityCenter-
DC, a development with apart-
ment buildings, a luxury hotel
and a variety of retail and restau-
rant destinations including Frui-
tive.
Lowery said he is committed
to working with each business
owner to ensure they can stay
afloat throughout the pandemic,
even once the moratorium lifts.
“I don’t think we are thinking
in the mentality of replacing
existing tenants,” he said. “The
strategy since the beginning of
March has been to help the
tenants we have.”
Not all business owners will be
so fortunate, especially those
working with independent land-
lords who may not be able to
subsist if their tenants do not pay
rent in full. Kathy Hollinger,
president and chief executive of
the Restaurant Association of
Metropolitan Washington, pre-
dicts that 25 percent of all restau-
rants in the region will not
reopen after the pandemic.
Yet, there is reason for opti-
mism that D.C. will emerge from
the crisis with small businesses
at least partly intact. Since
March, more than 45 new busi-
nesses have opened or prepared
for imminent openings, accord-
ing to The Post’s analysis of data
from the business improvement
districts.
Much of that growth has been
driven by residential neighbor-
hoods, where a quarantined life-
style has driven more residents
to frequent storefronts close toand Betsy, will make it through
the pandemic.
“I am thinking about it every
day and every night,” Vandaele
said of whether he will keep his
two restaurants open. “But we
have to try. We have to see where
we will go.”
While a running list of busi-
nesses have collapsed, hundreds
of businesses are determined to
survive and a handful of others
have even opened anew in the
District. Boston’s Tatte Bakery &
Cafe opened its first of three D.C.
locations in August. And Shibuya
Eatery, a Japanese restaurant,
opened in Adams Morgan in late
July.
The future for small business-
es in the nation’s capital is partly
in the hands of the city’s land-
lords, who will ultimately have to
decide whether to accommodate
flailing owners or oust them in
favor of more profitable alterna-
tives.
“The greatest determination
of whether a restaurant can be
successful is whether they can
work out an agreement with
their landlord,” Falcicchio said.
D.C. banned evictions in
March, but the moratorium will
end 60 days after the mayor lifts
the public health emergency.
That means landlords will have
to decide whether to evict ten-
ants who will probably still be
making only a fraction of their
pre-pandemic profit, or develop
flexible rent plans that give busi-
nesses time to get back on their
feet.
Timothy Lowery, a landlordis not a surprise to anyone that
the pandemic simply moved to
exacerbate some of those chal-
lenges,” Jackson said.
Anticipating heightened eco-
nomic hardship in Wards 7 and 8,
the District allocated $800,000
in grant funding specifically for
businesses in those areas. Still, a
handful are on the brink of
closure.Elsewhere in the city, Cleve-
land Park’s Firehook and Twins
Jazz on U Street NW, neighbor-
hood staples, permanently
closed after months of depleted
sales. B Too, a popular brunch
spot, has also shuttered after
eight years on 14th Street NW,
citing financial hardship.
“We kept on adding everything
up and it didn’t make any sense
as a business to keep on running
it,” said B Too’s chef and owner,
Bart Vandaele. “I have one life.”
But Vandaele hopes his other
two D.C. restaurants, Belga Cafedetrimental to the small busi-
nesses.”
The burden of the pandemic’s
economic collapse is not distrib-
uted evenly across the city. Offi-
cials say downtown D.C. and
neighborhoods east of the Ana-
costia River have been hit partic-
ularly hard.
In the DowntownDC Business
Improvement District, which in-
cludes 45 percent of the city’s
total office space, foot traffic has
plummeted to a record low of
12 percent of last year’s activity,
with only 5 percent of employees
frequenting their offices in the
area, according to Gerry Widdi-
combe, director of economic de-
velopment for the DowntownDC
district. As a result, at least 10
restaurant and retail shops per-
manently shuttered downtown,
including Maddy’s Taproom,
which had been a community
staple for nine years.
“It’s a ghost town,” Widdi-
combe said.
While businesses falter down-
town, storefronts in Historic An-
acostia are also in particularly
desperate shape. Because of “his-
toric inequities,” many busi -
nesses in the area had subsisted
for years without back office
support, which left some of them
without updated paperwork and
licenses necessary to qualify for
federal loans, according to Stan
Jackson, vice chairman f or the
Anacostia Business Improve-
ment District.
“There were a number of busi-
nesses that were marginalized at
best prior to the pandemic and itto enroll in the public high school
of his choice.
“The reality that this will not
just be over the summer is really
hitting us,” he said. “Our whole
family has to sacrifice now.”
Like Rozeboom, small-busi-
ness owners across the District
were buoyed for months by an
influx of funding from federal
and local government programs
and propelled by hope that grad-
ual reopenings would breathe
new life into their storefronts.
But as summer stretched on,
sales sputtered and pandemic-re-
lief grants ran dry. Now, as Con-
gress squabbles over how to help
the millions of struggling busi-
nesses nationwide, owners of
small firms across the region are
left teetering on the edge of
financial ruin.
“The severity of the pandemic,
the uncertainty, has crippled our
local economy,” said D.C. Council
member Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-
Ward 5), who chairs the commit-
tee on business and economic
development.
More than 70 small restau-
rants, coffee shops, entertain-
ment hubs and fitness studios in
the city have permanently closed
since March, with about 20 clo-
sures in July alone, according to a
Washington Post analysis of data
provided by 11 nonprofit busi-
ness improvement districts. And
that number is probably only a
fraction of D.C.’s total small-busi-
ness closures, which have gone
largely untracked by local and
national groups.
Neighborhoods dependent on
office workers or those that
lacked resources before the pan-
demic have been hit particularly
hard, according to local officials
and The Post’s analysis.
Those who are still in business
have found themselves increas-
ingly dependent on piecemeal
agreements with landlords, inno-
vative business strategies and,
often, deep personal sacrifices
from owners and employees to
make ends meet.
While small businesses na-
tionwide have been pummeled
by the economic fallout from the
pandemic, those in the District
have been particularly impacted.
Toast, a restaurant management
platform, reported that D.C. is
one of the five cities nationwide
that have e xperienced the most
acute drops in restaurant rev-
enue, bringing in less than
50 percent of last year’s daily
earnings.
Officials say the region’s sus-
tained economic losses can be
explained in part by the conflu-
ence of rising coronavirus cases
and rule-abiding residents. The
greater Washington region saw
an increase in the seven-day
average of new cases between
late June and mid-August, climb-
ing from an average of 900 to
close to 2,000. The average lev-
eled off by late August, but
residents have remained hesitant
to venture into public spaces
such as indoor restaurants and
shops.
“People are adhering to the
restrictions in D.C.,” said John
Falcicchio, interim deputy mayor
for planning and economic de-
velopment. “It is something that
actually really helps on the pub-
lic health side, but it could be
BUSINESSES FROM B1
Small-business owners across region left teetering on edge of financial ruin
AMANDA ANDRADE-RHOADES FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
CityCenterDC has been hit hard by the pandemic, as residents have remained hesitant to venture into public spaces such as indoor restaurants and shops.“The reality that this
will not just be over the
summer is really hitting
us. Our whole family
has to sacrifice now.”
Gregg Rozeboom,
owner of Fruitive, a plant-based
restaurant at CityCenterDCS0115-6x1.25washingtonpost.com/recipesSearch our database of tested recipes by ingredient or name.Explore new cuisines(202) 919-9209 (301) 778-4222