BUSINESSES LEFT TO CHOOSE AS COVID CASES SOAR
In the backyard of her business, Cutloose Hair, salon coowner Ashley Scroggins watched a livestream Friday morning on her phone. On the screen was an image of Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo speaking of the risks of COVID-19 to the region.
“Today we find ourselves careening toward a catastrophic and unsustainable situation,” Hidalgo said. “Our current hospitalization rate is on pace to overwhelm the hospitals in the near future.” She called for nonessential workers to stay home.
Scroggins put down her phone and put on her mask. Then she walked into her salon, shut down the online booking system and began calling upcoming reservations: The salon was closing until cases subsided.
Officials have moved to contain the number of known COVID-19 cases spiking across the state, often through conflicting messages that left businesses attempting to weigh health risks against economic concerns.
While Hidalgo recommended that nonessential workers stay home, she no longer had the power to enforce such a plan because Gov. Greg Abbott had superseded it with his own plan to reopen the state. Friday morning, Abbott rolled back portions of that plan — ordering bars and tubing and rafting establishments to suspend services and
restaurants to cap dine-in capacity at 50 percent — but maintained that other businesses could remain open.
That left salons, restaurants, gyms, offices, retailers and other businesses Friday to decide whether to heed Hidalgo’s call to return to the stay-at-home precautions she had the power to enact in March.
Businesses make own calls
Many, like Cutloose Hair, decided shutting down on-premise operations was the right thing to do.
“It’s not getting better,” Scroggins said of the pandemic. “And the only way we can truly support our city is just to do what they’re asking us to do.”
CenterPoint Energy, the regulated utility that distributes most of the electricity in the Houston area, announced that it would not bring employees back to the office as planned July 6, instead waiting for confirmed cases to trend downward.
Real estate brokerage Boulevard Realty suspended in-person open houses for properties it represents. The bistro Roost announced that it was returning to curbside and to-go service only Monday until further notice.
“What’s right is right,” said Kevin Naderi, Roost’s owner. “At this point, we want to avoid the inevitable and make things safe for everyone.”
For other businesses, it was business as normal — at least as normal as things have been since safety precautions such as social distancing and increased sanitation practices were put in place.
Therapy Hair Studio, a salon in River Oaks, will continue operations because it has faith in current safety measures. “From day one, we’ve kind of been on top of it,” co-owner David Bamford said.
Originally from Australia, where new cases of COVID-19 have dropped dramatically, Bamford said masks and other health precautions are enough to bring new cases to heel. The salon takes the temperatures of staff in the morning and evening and requires every client and hairdresser to wear a mask, which he said should keep the stay-at-home recommendation from impacting his volume of appointments.
“They know I’m a germaphobe,” he said.
Gallery Furniture, which is gearing up for its Fourth of July “super sale,” showed no signs of slowing down.
“I’ve been working so hard I haven’t had time to watch the news,” Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale said of Hidalgo’s recommendation.
San Antonio-based Frost Bank is also going full speed ahead in its plans to open two new locations in Houston, including one Wednesday in Third Ward and another in the Montrose neighborhood during the second week of July.
Other businesses have entered a holding pattern, waiting to see how things unfold. Brendan Boyd, owner of Tower Insurance and Financial Services, has continued to carefully gather his three-person team in the office. They each wear a mask and sit 6 feet apart. But Boyd’s rethinking the decision to have people in the office.
“We’ll probably resort back to working remotely,” he said. “It just depends on how things unfold.”
Uncertain future
Decisions to follow Hidalgo’s stay-at-home recommendation will have consequences across the economy, as they did in March.
Bars closing and restaurants shutting down dine-in services removes the venues and audiences that drag performer Angelina DM Trailz and her colleagues rely on for shows and a sense of community.
Trailz and a cast of three other drag performers and two male dancers had a regular show, Drag Bingo Bash, at the restaurant Boheme until March’s stay-at-home order.
As businesses began to reopen, so did performances, with a diminished cast. Friday, after Hidalgo’s recommendation, Boheme shut down dine-in service and rolled back out its quarantine specials for takeout, and it was back to square one.
Trailz has encouraged her fellow drag performers to apply for unemployment, but as an immigrant, she does not qualify. Friday, she was considering planning livestreamed shows to mitigate the lost income.
“We’re all just trying to find solutions right now,” she said.
This time around, businesses are closing up shop without a federal aid package of historic proportions to see them through.
When Cutloose Hair closed in March, Scroggins and co-owner Stephanie DeJean received a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program meant to support small businesses through the slowdown. “We were able to get out employees off of unemployment within a month,” DeJean said.
If the salon remains closed for more than a few weeks, it would need similar relief to continue paying its employees. Scroggins spoke with her bank Friday, asking her banker to keep an ear out for aid.
Meantime, she’s monitoring the capacity numbers at the Texas Medical Center, waiting for them to subside. “And hoping for some solid guidance,” she added.