Businesses praised for sticking it out
Tour highlights role of federal relief on North Coast
While spending time in Humboldt County, North Coast Rep. Jared Huffman (D-san Rafael) paid a visit to a few local businesses on Friday to hear how federal relief programs have helped and what challenges remain while recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Huffman visited Dick Taylor Craft Chocolate in Eureka, Phatsy Kline’s Parlor and Lounge in Eureka and Six Rivers Brewery in Mckinleyville, and highlighted what he called their exceptional resilience and adaptability during the worst parts of the pandemic.
“It’s all about Eureka and the Humboldt County business community today,” Huffman said during the tour. “Started off with a chance to visit with Gregg (Foster from the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission) and some of his small business stakeholders and thank them for everything they’ve done over the last year and kind of remember back to our big town hall with many of them in early April of last year when this pandemic was just becoming understood by most of us.”
Huffman said the help of Foster and local community leaders was essential to the COVID-19 response.
“I think the way this community weathered the past year, not to diminish all of the hardship that certainly has happened, but there’s a lot to celebrate there,” Huffman said. “…These last two stops, (Phatsy Kline’s and Six Rivers Brewery) are really success stories. I think it’s important that people understand as much as we think of this past year as a nightmare and kind of a lost year that had so much hardship, entrepreneurs are continuing to do this, to step up and put themselves at risk and follow their dreams and take great chances on this community.”
Earlier this year, Adam Dick and Dustin Taylor announced plans to expand their chocolate operation into the old Co-op building at the corner of E and First streets in Eureka’s Old Town. The building dates back to the late 1800s and has been vacant for decades.
After more than 10 years in the chocolate business, Dick and Justin Taylor felt they were beginning to outgrow their 6,000 square foot location at Fourth and A Streets in Eureka. The new facility is about 14,000 square feet and will allow them to generously expand their retail area and set up a little cafe in partnership with Humboldt Bay Coffee Company.
Standing in front of the new facility and looking toward Madaket Plaza on a gray Friday morning, Taylor said he hopes the business will bring new life to Eureka’s waterfront district.
When the pandemic hit over a year ago, Taylor said they had to adapt quickly and shifted focus to online sales.
“We shifted quick to try to be nimble with it and we saw commerce really take off,” he said. “Luckily, we were able to bring back all of our employees quick and then we got that (Paycheck Protection Program) loan really quick, that really saved our bacon and we were able to ramp up production again.”
Taylor said they have tentative plans to open to the public as soon as October but added that they had encountered some hangups that could push their grand opening out to December.
Huffman encouraged Dick and Taylor to reach out to his office for support if they experience “bumps along the way.”
Once known for live music and big parties, the Inn at 2nd and C in the historic Eagle House was hit hard by the pandemic but the hotel’s four owners took ad
vantage of the downtime to revamp Phatsy Kline’s Parlor and Lounge.
Co-owner Jennifer Metz greeted Huffman and his small entourage in the hotel’s ballroom — now dining room — and led a tour through Phatsy Kline’s and up to one of the hotel’s second-floor rooms.
When COVID hit, the owners decided to turn their event space into a full restaurant.
“We had events and mu- sic about five days a week, so that was our primary thing was the hotel and the events,” Metz said. “That was kind of how we handled COVID, we got the (Economic Injury Disaster Loan) and took that money to redesign and the open restaurant and then the PPP money that we got for getting things running again. We’re really grateful for that because we would have probably not been able to make it through.”
Foster noted that Metz received one of the first loans through the COVID Economic Resilience Consortium’s (CERC) emergency loan program. “One of the things we did in that CERC call was put together an emergency loan program to give short-term bridge loans while PPP and some of the others were setting up and they were our first one,” Foster said. “We made our first loan to them out of that program on March 24 that’s how quickly, and it wasn’t just us, that people worked to get that program up and running five days after the governor’s order.”
After visiting the Inn at 2nd and C, Huffman headed north to Six Rivers Brewery in Mckinleyville to meet with owners Meredith Maier and Talia Nachshon who began preparing for restrictions early on in the pandemic.
Though the transition was clunky at times, Maier said the pandemic provided the opportunity to do some maintenance at Six Rivers and to work alongside other local businesses.
“Do you want to see what our most recent PPP funds were able to provide?” Maier eagerly asked as she led Huffman outside to a newly built, partially covered patio. “We were also able to get some local donors to help us in building this new structure.”
“We’re super proud of what you’ve built here and really how you have sustained and continued to thrive during a tough time,” Huffman said. “As a member of Congress during this whole awful year, when we had to come together and very quickly push hundreds of billions of dollars out to people in need and invent the airplane while you’re flying when you hear stories where it actually worked and made the difference.”