Helana Natt, executive director of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, said looters have been taking advantage of the virus-induced shutdown.
If “the retailers were open and had their employees back, the people that are in the community, that are peaceful protesters would surround their businesses that are open and would prevent the looters that are getting in,” Natt said.
A walk downtown Tuesday morning showed businesses battered into comas: The windows of the Red Lion bar on Bleecker Street still wish pedestrians a happy St. Patrick’s Day. Across the street, New University Pen & Stationery was boarded up and locked shut. Helicopters churned the air overhead. Drills and hammers echoed through the West Village as retailers and restaurants secured their glass fronts.
It wasn’t just brick-and-mortar businesses that face an uncertain path. Bhairavi Desai, head of the New York Taxi Drivers Alliance, said her members have been ravaged by disease and, in many cases, usurious debt.
“I’ve been worried about once people get back to work and look for each other, and realize many of their co-workers are gone,” she said. “The majority of drivers are immigrants, and it’s a tight community. The uncertainty and grief are going to hit many drivers when the economy reopens.”
Grayers, a clothing store at Bleecker and Seventh Avenue, closed its doors March 13. Those doors now are being covered with sheets of wood, a roughly $1,000 expense, said manager Stacy Georgiou.
“We just can’t wait to go back to business,” she said. “We may be out of business.”
The New York Police Department arrested 700 people Monday night, said Commissioner Dermot Shea. While the vast majority of people in the streets vented peacefully, some attacked any business at hand.
It was a common impulse across America.
Dan Fitzpatrick, chief executive officer of Indiana-based Quality Dining Inc., operates about 220 Burger King and Chili’s restaurants with 9,000 workers in seven states as a franchisee. The company has been “deeply unprofitable for a couple of months.”
Now, he’s having to close early because of curfews and had more than $100,000 damage done to a Burger King in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on Friday. But he boarded up the shattered windows and remained open, and he’s vowing to weather protests as he did the pandemic.
“You figure it out, you tough through it and you just deal with it,” he said.
In San Leandro, California, Carlos Hidalgo’s Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership was looted Sunday night. Overwhelmed police couldn’t help, and Hidalgo told his employees to flee. Someone crashed a car through the front window.
“You couldn’t stop them, they were like ants, they cut all the fences they were crawling in here,” Hidalgo said by phone. At least 64 cars were taken, 20 of which he’s since recovered because they have trackers on them. Another 30 were damaged.