Session slow at Capitol-area eateries
Covid, political turmoil costing them customers
Tom Drogo sat in his bistro in the shadow of the Arkansas Capitol last month commiserating by phone with the owner of a nearby Subway shop, both men sharing gloomy reports of slow business along their stretch of Capitol Avenue.
Legislative sessions like the one that began Jan. 11 are normally a boon for Drogo, the owner of Capitol Bistro, one of the few eateries serving the neighborhood directly surrounding the Capitol.
During the rest of the year, state employees who fill the office buildings around the Capitol are enough to keep business steady, but many of those
workers have been home for months because of the covid-19 pandemic.
Hopes for a rebound with lawmakers in town have so far been dashed, Drogo said, adding that business remains about half of what it was before the pandemic.
“The vehicle traffic is down, the foot traffic is down, but again we’re so early on the front end of this [legislative session],” Drogo told a reporter. “You know, if we were midway through this whole process and all I saw is what we’re seeing now, I’d be concerned.”
During weekdays, the Capitol district is home to around 3,640 state employees, according to Alex Johnson, the chief administrative officer for the Department of Transformation and Shared Services. Roughly 300 of those employees are still working from home, down from a high of 1,265 earlier in the pandemic.
Still, the number of workers can swell by hundreds more when the Legislature is in session, drawing 135 lawmakers to the Capitol along with a trail of lobbyists, staff, reporters, witnesses testifying on bills and other onlookers.
Regular sessions, which occur in odd-numbered years, typically last from January to April, while the shorter fiscal sessions held in even-numbered years often last a month in the spring.
This year, however, pandemic-era rules require anyone entering the Capitol to receive a health screening. Signs posted in hallways warn against congregating in groups and normally packed committee rooms have been reserved for lawmakers, staff and anyone signed up to provide testimony, while allowances have been made for legislators and state agency personnel to participate remotely.
“Used to be, you’d see a lot of people when [the Legislature’s in] session, but now there’s none,” said Maunish Shah, the owner of the Subway inside the Victory Building a block away from the Capitol.
“They don’t get out,” Shah said. “I see the people get out like around 3 o’clock when the session is finished, they get out and they go in the car and they go home.”
Health Department guidelines for restaurants and bars currently allow dine-in service at up to two-thirds capacity, with at least 6 feet of distance between customers at different tables.
At places known as haunts for politicos, proprietors said the free-wheeling atmosphere of past sessions has been more subdued during the pandemic.
“I don’t want to say a party, but it used to be a lot of shaking hands, you go up, people would roam around a whole lot more,” said Heidi Shackelford, the manager of Cotham’s in the City, a burger restaurant located about two blocks from the Capitol.
“Now it may be more, you know, people still being courteous and say ‘Hi’ to people, but it’s more of ‘OK, we’ve got to sit down, we’ve got to distance, we can’t have a group of 15 right here, a group of 20 down there,’” Shackelford said. “They’re still very cordial and nice but it’s not as much as it used to be. They’re taking social distancing seriously.”
Venturing farther from the Capitol, lobbyists and lawmakers would typically descend on Doe’s Eat Place at the corner of Markham and Ringo streets on Fridays for an “open luncheon” during sessions, a tradition they’ve skipped this year, said owner Katherine Eldridge. (Doe’s, known for its steaks and tamales, built on its reputation for serving political clientele when members of then-Gov. Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign became regulars, taking their seats by the bar or in the side room just before closing to avoid onlookers, Eldridge recalled last week.)
“Sometimes, those [luncheons] are big enough to fill our main dining room and overflow into our side dining room,” Eldridge said. “We’re missing those.”
In addition to the losses of their typical lunch crowds, workers in the Capitol district told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that other staples of their businesses have been lost over the past years.
Drogo, the owner of Capitol Bistro, said catering outside events for his lunch customers once made up about a third of his business, but it has since “gone right out the window.”
At Cotham’s, with its walls decorated with the red, blue and green campaign signs representing decades of Arkansas politics, Shackelford said the restaurant was not able to host any election-night watch parties or fundraisers during the 2020 elections as it had in past years.
Some businesses, including Doe’s and Cotham’s, qualified for federal loans under the Paycheck Protection Program, according to federal records. Shah, the owner the Subway in the Victory Building, said he also received federal assistance during the pandemic (records of the PPP loan were unavailable online).
“That’s why we’re still here,” Shah said.
Drogo, however, said he applied twice for federal assistance and was denied without being given a reason. The two employees at Capitol Bistro are Drogo, who cooks, and his wife, who works the register.
Some businesses in the area were also rattled last summer when demonstrators protesting the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd were dispersed from the Capitol and left broken windows behind, including at the Capitol Bistro and Subway.
The Victory Building, which leases space to both the Bistro and Subway, paid for the repairs, according to both owners.
Drogo said he noticed a drop in customers after the summer protests, and again in recent weeks after a mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, which led to concerns about similar threats at state capitols.
“You got the increase in security and that’s great, but people are just flat-out scared,” Drogo said. “And you can’t, how do you quantify that? You really can’t. But that definitely is a factor, in addition to, just the fear of the unknown, of, you know, social distancing, masks, the virus, the flu, the uncertainty of what that all looks like and how it’s playing out in people’s lives.”