N. Arizona economy bouncing back from pandemic struggles

For the economies in communities like Flagstaff and Sedona, tourism and foot traffic are crucial to many of the restaurants, businesses and hotels that populate these popular tourist destinations.

With pandemic restrictions waning after a complicated couple of years for business owners and consumers, Joe Galli, senior adviser of public policy at the Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce, predicted the city will return to some normalcy soon.

“From the chamber’s perspective, it’s very nice to have the federal travel restrictions lifted and to have international travelers back. Northern Arizona is a huge target for international travel. We’re also very fortunate to have the economy booming in the state and to have the growth that we’ve had, particularly in metro Phoenix and the demand that that puts on us and our travel economy. “And that’s good for all our partners across those sectors so restaurants, hotels, tour guides … all back running at really strong levels and that’s very good for us,” Galli said.

At the same time, Flagstaff is not immune to the struggles that plague many smaller local economies when it comes to housing affordability.

“The rest of our economy suffers from economies of scale, from nogrowth policies, from wage mandates and from inflation and as a result we’re in the middle of the worst housing crisis ever and we’re in a really tough position when it comes to keeping employees in good-paying jobs,” he said. “It’s not that they’re not making good money here, it’s that the affordability in the community has reached levels of unaffordability in a lot of sectors and that drives employees to bigger communities.”

n one of the many shops populating downtown Flagstaff, dozens of people strolled around looking at the diverse inventory of Bright Side Bookshop last week. Amy McClelland, the shop’s manager, said that after the store was shut down early on in the pandemic, they had a staggered reopening, following recommendations from public health experts and officials that limited the number of employees working and customers shopping in the small store. Once vaccines became widely available, McClelland said, business bounced back and has yet to slow down in the year since.

“It was like as soon as we stopped having the person at the door counting 10 customers at a time it was almost immediate that everything went back to normal, it felt like,” McClelland said.

Some other businesses have not been so lucky.

About an hour away in Sedona, business at Son Silver West, a store selling Southwestern decor, has just recently hit a downturn — more than any they’d experienced throughout the pandemic so far, said the store’s manager Martha Martinez.

Located along one of Sedona’s main thoroughfares, a lot of the store’s visitors decide to stop in as they’re passing by.

“I think it’s the gas prices,” keeping customers away, she said.