KYW Newsradio's Community Comeback series checks in on Philadelphia neighborhoods and livelihoods to find out how small businesses made it through the pandemic and how they are surviving, and even thriving, today.
WEST PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The 52nd Street corridor in West Philadelphia is known as a hub for Black-owned businesses. Since early 2020, tough hits to the bottom line have knocked some business owners out of the game, while others have been able to meet new challenges.
Jabari Jones, president of the West Philadelphia Corridor Collaborative, the dominant coalition of small businesses in the area, recently ticked through the list of setbacks.
"We've had the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to state restrictions that have restricted their ability and capacity to serve customers and generate revenue. We had two rounds of unfortunate civil unrest that caused physical damage to a lot of these businesses on these commercial corridors. We even had tropical storm flooding in the southwestern portion of our district from Tropical Storm Isaias," he said.
Civil unrest in Philadelphia, and the forceful response of police, following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police in May, damaged about 15% of the businesses in the area, according to estimates in the Inquirer. And after the killing of Walter Wallace by police in West Philadelphia in October, more looting wrought similar destruction.
"So businesses that really suffered a lot, they have seen a significant amount of expenses that have gone unpaid, because they were not able to generate any income," Jones said.
The average West Philadelphia business has over $8,000 in past-due financial obligations that have gone unpaid because of the economic downturn of the pandemic, Jones said, according to a survey conducted by the WPCC.
"It has declined a lot," says Tiffany Ward, owner of NV My Eyeware, 137 S 52nd St.
Ward started her optometrist shop in 2015 as a mobile operation. Through the years, she grew the business to two locations, opening her second shop on South 18th Street in the Point Breeze neighborhood.
"Initially it was great — up until the pandemic. The pandemic kind of hit us hard," Ward said.
She said she was forced to close the South Philadelphia location permanently.
"We had to make a hard decision to either keep it and struggle through it, or close it and focus on this location, so we decided to put more of our focus on our West Philadelphia location," she said.
There is some history, in this neighborhood, of Black small business owners overcoming adversity.
For decades, the 52nd Street commercial corridor was the thriving heart and soul of West Philadelphia business and culture. After a period of economic decline, including a prolonged SEPTA renovation that forced several businesses near the 52nd Street El stop to close their doors, and the departure of a slew of middle-class residents in the surrounding neighborhood, many of the movie theaters, jazz clubs, restaurants and high-end clothing stores of its heyday came to be replaced by fast food take-out, convenience stores and check-cashing places.
Related
Through it all, the remaining long-term residents and business owners have adapted and survived. And in the last couple of decades, a new generation of merchants, including Ward, have brought investment and vitality back to the strip.
NV My Eyewear was spared from damage during the civil unrest of the last year, as were many other Black-owned businesses, Ward says, because of community support. Still, business has been slow since then for her and other vendors in the area.
Related
"We get a good response from our community because of word of mouth, and because we are close in the community for people to get to," she said. "We do take a lot of state and employment benefits, so people tend to come and support us."
She says her business received state and federal support through the COVID-19 pandemic, but some of that has come with further financial obligation.
"We were fortunate enough to be able to receive a lot of the grants that we applied for, even the PPP, even though that has not been forgiven yet," she said. "I'm still going through a lot to get that forgiven."
Related
On a larger scale, Jones says, he sees signs of hope.
"A lot of the communities and a lot of these businesses have really innovated and adapted in terms of their business model to be able to still generate income," he said. He cited the new revenue stream from outdoor bar service and the sale of to-go cocktails that helped many restaurants stay open during the pandemic.
"And we've seen that, as vaccination rates rise, as restrictions seem to drop, we've seen a lot of customers starting to come back in full force to support local businesses," Jones said.
Related
He said two things are needed to bolster that economic recovery. First, lawmakers need to be strategic in the allocation of federal relief funds that are still sitting untouched in state and city coffers.
"Those dollars could be doing a lot of good to help make sure that these businesses could stabilize," he said.
And second, Jones said, Harrisburg needs to eliminate regulations that are preventing businesses from growing, such as the push from some lawmakers to end innovations like to-go cocktails.
As Ward looks to the future of her business, and that of her five full-time employees, she says she is investing in her own education to help cover her bases just in case hard times strike again.
"Now that I know a lot of my business is geared toward having an optometrist on staff — and I know, if I can't pay an optometrist full time, they can't stay — so I'm making sure that never happens again, by going to optometry school myself," she said.
With the determination of business owners like her, the lessons learned in the last year and a half will help the 52nd Street corridor survive and, hopefully one day soon, thrive again.