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March 21, 2020

Elicker: State, feds must lead way in economic recovery

PHOTO | New Haven BIZ New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker meets with reporters outside 200 Orange Street Friday afternoon. At left is a sign-language interpreter.
By Michael C. Bingham

Connecticut’s state government and Washington, D.C. will have to provide the fuel for the long and undoubtedly painful economic recovery that it is hoped will follow once the coronavirus crisis recedes.

So said New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker Friday afternoon session during what has become a daily ritual with members of the local media during the crisis. “Frankly, I think we need a lot of subsidy and support from the federal government and state” to help businesses weather the immediate shutdown and navigate what is sure to be a long, slow and difficult recovery.”

“One thing that gives me some solace is that we’re all in this together,” Elicker said. “Around the nation, everyone is experiencing the same economic hardship. My hope is that because we’re in this together, there will be the political will [in Hartford] to push the federal government to do the right thing here and support our local businesses.”

During a Thursday conference call Gov. Ned Lamont and David Lehman, commissioner of the state’s Department of Economic & Community Development (DECD), announced that the state would provide low-cost 90-day bridge recovery loans to businesses to help them stanch immediate cash-flow shortfalls as a result of the crisis.

And on Monday, it was announced that the U.S. Small Business Administration had approved disaster-relief loans of up to $2 million for small- and mid-sized Connecticut companies as well as qualified non-profit organizations to help them recover from the “economic injury” inflicted by the coronavirus crisis.

Elicker acknowledged that the impact on the city’s business community will be profound and its economic impact felt for years to come. “The number of unemployment requests [on the part of city workers] has skyrocketed,” he said. More than 1,000 workers at city businesses had already been laid off from their jobs and filed claims for unemployment insurance benefits.

In addition, the mayor acknowledged that of the countless city businesses that had closed their doors, voluntarily or otherwise, since the crisis began, dozens or hundreds will likely never reopen. “People will be struggling for many, many years because of this,” Elicker said.

“Particularly with the hospitality industry” — including now-shuttered restaurants, bars, hotels — ”it’s very difficult to shut down for even a week. A lot of businesses have only two weeks’ [cash] capacity, and then they can’t [continue to keep their doors open],” said Elicker. “And it’s much harder to start a new business than to keep an existing business going.” 

Even once the immediate medical emergency subsides, the economic landscape of the city, state, nation and world will have been permanently transformed, and not in a good way. For just one example, in New Haven the city’s largest economic engine, Yale University, has closed its doors until at least Labor Day. And thousands of non-resident undergrad and graduate students are no longer here to spend money and fuel the city’s retail economy.

Also on Friday, the mayor called out particular small businesses which he said had violated city guidelines to strictly enforce “social distancing” at their places of business. These included Nica’s Market on Orange Street (in the mayor’s East Rock neighborhood), to which police were summoned in response to a complaint that customers there were lined up too closely to one another, and 50 Fitch Street, a Westville bar, which also had elicited a complaint about customer crowding.

“You need to cooperate in order to keep your customers safe and our community safe,” Elicker warned non-complying businesses. There were no arrests.

Overall, he added, “I have been amazed at how willing businesses have been to cooperate” with the shutdown. City Public Health Director Maritza Bond said that city barber shops, hair and nail salons are now required to be closed, and that the city would be enforcing that ban. 

Gov. Ned Lamont on Friday announced he was ordering non-essential businesses to either close until the crisis passes or allow their employees to work from home.

Quote of the Day

“I ran one marathon. I’m not planning to do another one — except for this marathon right now.”

— Elicker, a runner, responding to observations from social-media observers that he “looked tired.”

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