Many Middle GA businesses to stay closed during COVID-19 despite Kemp’s OK to open
There came a point in Gov. Brian Kemp’s speech Monday when he announced that some businesses — gyms, barber shops and bowling alleys among them — that had been ordered shut down early in the coronavirus outbreak would on Friday be cleared to reopen.
Deanna Green, the co-owner of a Macon massage studio, listened with interest.
Especially when the governor said businesses like hers, where clients and massage therapists are in close proximity, would soon be free to open their doors.
“I truly don’t know what the thought process was behind that,” Green said of the decision. “I don’t find it a responsible move. ... I think it’s just semantics. In my personal opinion, it seems like (they’re) lifting the ban so that ... they can say that weren’t forcing people to stay closed.”
Green, who along with her sister runs Kay-Lynn Massage & Bodywork Studio in Ingleside Village, said Tuesday that she couldn’t understand how a massage studio could be deemed OK to reopen if social-distancing requirements are still in place.
“That’s literally impossible for my business,” Green said. “I don’t know where (the governor) was coming from. My only thought is they needed to lift the order because of, I assume, push back from other people. ... I don’t know what they were thinking, quite frankly.”
Green said no one she knows of in her field locally has intentions of opening anytime soon. The soonest she can imagine having customers again is perhaps early June.
“It’s not looking good for the entirety of May,” she said. “While the state is allowing (reopening), we’re just not confident that Macon has gotten to the point where it’s safe.”
Green said most of her customers probably wouldn’t visit, even with the ban lifted.
“I know there are people that would. Not a lot, but I do know that we have had people say if we opened they would feel comfortable coming in,” she said.
“We can’t stay closed forever”
With restaurants given the clearance to open for dine-in service come Monday, Gary Lanton, the owner of Holy Smokes Barbecue in Dublin, welcomed the news.
“We can’t stay closed forever,” Lanton said. “I think that when we open up we are going to have to be very careful and cautious.”
Lanton said his restaurant will cut its seating capacity in half, seating guests at every other table. Still, he figures most of his customers will still order takeout.
“I really think that we had to do something (to start back),” he said. “Quite honestly, our economy is not made to be stopped the way that it is. I know there are health issues out there and 100% we have taken that very seriously.”
Lanton added: “It is very scary to think of what could happen if we were to stay like this for a prolonged period.”
Still too early
Meanwhile in Macon, Jeneane Barber who owns Jeneane’s at Pinebrook, a downhome-cooking eatery on Forsyth Road, is putting off reopening until May 4.
“It’s a little early still,” Barber said. “I know my employees need to get back to work, but there’s so much you’ve got to think about.”
She, too, intends to rearrange tables to separate people sitting in her dining room, and will as she always has offer to-go orders. She tried serving only takeout customers for three days early in the crisis but didn’t break even and decided to close.
Barber, who has been in the restaurant business since the late 1980s, isn’t sure when diners will feel comfortable again.
“I’d say sometime in September,” she said.
Kemp sending “mixed message”
Macon Mayor Robert Reichert said some owners of local businesses OK’d to reopen have told him they have no plans to do so.
“Some beauticians, some barbers are saying to me that even though they’re allowed to open doesn’t mean they are,” he said.
The mayor said he was “a little surprised, to be perfectly honest,” that the governor decided to relax restrictions on certain businesses on a statewide basis rather than on “a more tailored approach” that would have opened places regionally based on infection COVID-19 rates in those areas.
“His lifting of the mandatory closure of certain businesses, leaving the rest of his shelter-in-place order in place, has the potential for increasing the spread,” Reichert said. “And that kind of mandates that individuals exercise their individual responsibility for their own actions.”
The mayor said that if there is an uptick in coronavirus cases now, people will wonder if the reopenings were a factor.
“I don’t mean any criticism, (but) it is interesting when you leave the shelter-in-place order in place but then in the same breath open up these stores ... that have close personal contact between individuals as part of the business model,” he said. “It is a mixed message.”
Telegraph writer Justin Baxley contributed to this report.