A couple of weeks ago, and with little fanfare, Firehook’s location at 215 Pennsylvania Avenue SE closed. There was no note, though a reader via Instagram said that at some point between Christmas and late February, a note did announce the departure of the bakery. Earlier in February, SunnySide Group, owners of We, The Pizza and Good Stuff Eatery, announced that Santa Rosa Taqueria would be going on hiatus until 2022.
Plainly stated, the Capitol fence is bad for business. Coupled with the pandemic, where even on a great day most businesses can only count on making about 50 to 60% of the revenue they’d receive on a regular day pre-pandemic, the dearth of foot traffic because of the fence could spell doom for more businesses along the fence. When Firehook closed, I reached out to them and they had this to say: “Unfortunately, the closure was due to both COVID and the Capitol fence.” Julie Aaronson, the Executive Director of CHAMPS, the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce, issued a statement on the fence that you can read here, echoing many of these sentiments in terms of businesses.
I had a long conversation with Micheline Mendelsohn of SunnySide Group. Those of you who attended our Saturday protest may recall seeing her generously giving away pizzas to everyone who came– an incredibly sweet gesture for which thanks are not enough. She tells me that We, The Pizza’s model– where people are used to and comfortable with pizza delivery even before the pandemic– has allowed that particular business to thrive despite the pandemic numbers, and it’s allowed them to keep about 60% of their regular staff. Most businesses around the District do not own their locales and have to contend with landlords. In the case of the three SunnySide Group restaurants, there are five landlords in total, for instance, due to the way the buildings were originally divided. Mendelsohn also tells me that having multiple landlords is part of the business life around the Hill.
Some landlords have been understanding of the plight of small businesses; however, others have been less lenient and have demanded payments on rent deferment that place business owners in tough situations. After all, deferments only work if you are absolutely sure that your business will be doing 100% of its projected business in a certain amount of time– and the longer the pandemic keeps going, the less certainty there is. As businesses face the tough decision to renew a lease, some of them are choosing to instead give up their business. Such was the case for beloved institution Montmartre, which was facing the renegotiation of its lease when the pandemic started. Summit to Soul, which is slated to close at the end of May, also mentioned the end of their lease as a reason for closing business. In her farewell letter, owner Kim Wattrick said that it provides “a clean break.”
Adding an obstacle like zero foot traffic to a location where workers from the House office buildings and the Library of Congress buildings used to get food, in addition to all the tourists who are unable to wander in on account of the pandemic and the fence, and the situation for these businesses becomes extremely dire– and in the case of Firehook, fatal.
As the weather improves and neighbors and tourists alike are looking for a quick bite to eat al fresco, business is not where it can be. Out of the three restaurants owned by her family in the 300 block of Pennsylvania Avenue, the most vulnerable happens to be Santa Rosa Taqueria, which during the pandemic has not been able to make more than 40% of its regular business– an unsustainable figure. She told me, “it’s very nerve-wracking to run businesses where people are not walking around and [it looks] like a ghost town.”
Sonoma Restaurant mentions that the fence “definitely has affected tourist traffic in general, and the ability of folks in SE (DC) to get to us… [it’s] probably had a negative effect on businesses coming from other parts of the city, but our neighborhood folks are still showing up.”
The clearest solution at this point is, first and foremost, to reopen Independence and Constitution Avenues as soon as possible. As Julie adds, “[this] is needed, particularly as we hope to reopen as vaccine availability increases and the weather gets warmer.” This seems to be something that will be achieved within the next few weeks. But the repercussions of having been fenced off will continue to plague our local businesses for a long time to come.