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How is your town / city holding up.


BR46

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The little city that I live in has been shut down since St. Patrick's day. In the last few days I see for sale signs going up in the windows of small business. 

A few days ago I noticed a new sign in a window that another small business decided to close and consolidate everything to their other store. 

In our county there are 6 active cases with one hospitalized in a population of 115,340 in 1,271 square miles. We fall under the same rules as another county with 950,000 people in 248 square miles. 

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I'm watching my friends businesses go under for 6 people but I don't know what the correct solution would be. 

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As far as the town itself it appears to be doing fine.  People are not really staying home, the seaside walking trails are full daily, the stores are full, it is just sometimes you need to wait in line to get in.

You wont notice the damage here until things go back to normal and small stores/restaurants simply do not re-open.   Then it will be a better assessment 

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2 minutes ago, Zephyr said:

As far as the town itself it appears to be doing fine.  People are not really staying home, the seaside walking trails are full daily, the stores are full, it is just sometimes you need to wait in line to get in.

You wont notice the damage here until things go back to normal and small stores/restaurants simply do not re-open.   Then it will be a better assessment 

Same here. The restaurants are all doing take out, but I doubt they are making enough to pay the bills

Traffic is noticeably lighter but there is traffic  

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5 minutes ago, Zephyr said:

You wont notice the damage here until things go back to normal and small stores/restaurants simply do not re-open.   Then it will be a better assessment 

This.

We have a crap ton of restaurants nearby, and I can't imagine they all survive (nor would some "naturally").  A lot depends on ability to pivot to take out/delivery.  Also, a lot depends on landlords and banks being flexible.  It's a relative ghost town for the non-restaurants small stores - mostly clothing or accessories or services - but you do see the restaurants semi-active.

 

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We’re good hear. Our county has 26k people and we have had 11 cases with no deaths. Our biggest industry is dairy and forestry. So far farmers are getting by, still struggling like they always do but surviving. It’s mud season so the normal slow time for loggers but I’m sure they are hoping to be working soon.

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Most restaurants still open and seem to be doing well. I wanted a carry oot last Friday and the wait was 1½ hrs. So I called another place that was 30 minutes. One place is closed Monday & Tuesday. Gas stations, hooch stores, drug & food stores are open. One local ice cream place is. A bar near me isn't open...I don't think. The Chrysler engine plant is down....but all auto is.

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I live in a town where this kinda traffic is normal. It was already hard for someone to make it in a small business where they can make more money making toilet seats a the factory down the street. 

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The roads in my city are fairly quiet which is nice.  Most restaurants are open for take out but the full impact won’t be seen until things loosen up.

We have had really nice weather and the beach communities have been hammered with visitors.  Most LA county beaches are closed so I’m guessing that’s impacting us too.  Word is our Governor will close all CA beaches... 

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6 hours ago, ChrisL said:

The roads in my city are fairly quiet which is nice.  Most restaurants are open for take out but the full impact won’t be seen until things loosen up.

We have had really nice weather and the beach communities have been hammered with visitors.  Most LA county beaches are closed so I’m guessing that’s impacting us too.  Word is our Governor will close all CA beaches... 

Bingo

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/30/848672491/governor-temporarily-closes-all-beaches-and-state-parks-in-orange-county-califor?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=nprblogscoronavirusliveupdates

Is this a normal view or a clean air view of the mountians?

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Roads are quieter.  I haven't quite paid attention if air quality is better. I better get outside longer. I've only been here for 1.5 wks. before Vancouver.

About 3 years before pandemic, small to some biz were suffering/shuttered. There was at least 25% unleased commercial space downtown.  I heard it may be climbing to 30%. Yea, we got cheaper rent right now.  Grocery stores seem to have steady biz. but the national chain stores I go downtown aren't thronging and no lineups.  Here, people grocery shopping around downtown are different, because not all of them drive /live not too far away. You do see enough people walking with bags of groceries.  That's permitted of course.

It's probably the suburban grocery stores with line-ups. I have no interest in checking that out...comments based on local news photos, etc.

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10 minutes ago, BR46 said:

I will say one thing good about the shutdown is on my walk home from the hardware store I seen a lot of people out walking.

I used to be one of the few people that walk in my neighborhood, but now it is full of walkers, runners, and families on bikes. 
 

I think my one square mile township has aboot 35 cases. I don’t know aboot small businesses but it can’t be good. 

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1 hour ago, dennis said:

Yeah “my” beach was at the center of the controversy....  Sucks as it’s been our refuge, we go there 3-4 times a week as it’s so close. We just came back from a ride down there, one more before it’s closed...

As for the picture, it’s a bit more complicated.  Overall air quality is better but after a storm and a low pressure system is moving through air quality is always good for several days and images like that are common.  When we have a dome of high pressure the schmuck gets trapped under that dome of pressure and we get shit air quality.  We had crap air last week during a heat wave caused by high pressure settling over us.

People like to bag on our air quality but it varies widely depending on where you live in SoCal.  Are air is awesome year round where I live being close to the beach.

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12 hours ago, BR46 said:

In our county there are 6 active cases with one hospitalized in a population of 115,340 in 1,271 square miles.

We have 53 cases,  and 1 death.  Our county is 1135 square miles, with an approximate population of 111,000.

Of course about 90 miles NW is Chicago, the suburbs and about 9.5 million people.   I'll guess they have most of the nearly 53,000 cases.

I'm glad we are locked down...   I'd assume if we were open, we'd get MANY visitors who are sick and that would make us sick.   I wish we wen't closed...  I'll guess some business won't reopen.

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I live in a fairly wealthy county in the nation's highest income state, where the county's poverty rate is 6%, half the U.S. avg.

Generally after an economic downturn, Baltimore and some other areas with a lot of low-income residents take a long time to recover compared to the other area. The greatest thing Maryland ever did was donate land for the National Capital.  Ever since, there have been a lot of good-paying, stable, government jobs that lift businesses up in bad times.

I haven't heard news of many things closing permanently, both because I don't leave home often and because my circle of friends and relatives are either retired with good incomes or in essential jobs and still working (mostly from home) - even my 19 year-old nephew Ryan went back to work yesterday after recovering from COVID-19 even though MD is still shelter-in-home, no non-essential work.

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Our county crossed the 1,000 mark yesterday. :( We only have a county population of about 55,000. A significant percentage of people with positives are from a meat-packing plant. WoW said she expects a lot more positiives the next few days. The National Guard has had an aid station at the fairgrounds this week. They have been testing about 250 people/day. A running friend shared yesterday that she had been positive and shared her experience. Her politics align with the "open up the economy" crowd, but she made it clear, from her experience, it is definitely not time, yet. Even with all the positive tests, very few are being hospitalized. The ICU still has beds. The shortage is staff qualified to intubate patients so some must be flown to other hospitals. 

This is the first week our business has really been feeling the slowdown because of stay at home. Today is the first day I don't have any calls scheduled. We will have to wait and see how we roll out the economy after the curve goes down. Groceries seem to be doing fine. A convenience store we service said gas sales are down, but they are selling a lot of lottery tickets! Restaurants in town are doing their best to keep cash flow through take out and delivery.

One owner of a handful of restaurants and bars has been doing daily Facebook Live posts and has done creative cross-promotions with a number of downtown small businesses. Example-one of those wine and paint party places obviously can't be open. So they were selling a small paint and pizza party package. He also sells cakes for a coffee shop with takeout orders. Even though he has shared his struggles on a couple rough days in his posts, he has been a rallying point and an example many other small businesses have patterned themselves after. 

People are exhausted of having nothing else to talk about; especially with our city being spotlighted nationally by the New York Times and MSNBC because of the high numbers. 

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By end of yesterday, our city has 3,590  known cases of covid.  We have the largest number of cases in the province.  Over 500 cases from 1 meat packing plant. 

For entire province there have been 89 deaths.

I believe there will be gradual re-opening of restaurants ...with social distancing in 2 wks.  I have to listen to the news now for this.  

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5 hours ago, MickinMD said:

The greatest thing Maryland ever did was donate land for the National Capital.

It was a mosquito infested swamp that could not be inhabited for 4 months of the year.  Donate is an interesting choice of words.

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