Frustration is mounting as the New Orleans business community continues to squirm under Phase Two coronavirus restrictions, and if help doesn’t come soon and revenues don’t start flowing, the consequences will be dire. New Orleans and Company President and CEO Stephen Perry rang the alarm bells on Newell’s program Wednesday morning.
“We’ve always thought September would be a critical month in the recovery,” Newell said. “Not a lot has happened in DC, and as it relates to your industry, not much is happening at all. Now with the Supreme Court nomination sucking all the oxygen out of the room, there is a major distraction and we’re not sure anything will happen before the election.”
“I have a sense of extreme worry,” Perry said. “Unlike after Katrina, we have been utterly failed by our Congressional delegations, Republicans and Democrats… we have been excluded from every part of the CARES Act and all the PPP thus far. It’s made it extremely difficult for us to get the customers back that drive our industry. In state government, it’s been the same, we got money into the appropriations bill, and it came out in the conference committee. After Katrina, we got $28 million from CDBG funds, and I was able to go to the legislature and get a $5 million direct approptionat to the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, and that made all the difference in getting our restaurants, hotels and workforce back up and going. This time, I feel like we don’t have a government partner. We’ve reached a critical moment.”
“87% of New York City restaurants, bars and other such venues could not pay their full rent in August,” Newell continued. “The only way any of this breaks free is the aid coming down to either the restaurants or the landlords, one way or the other. What they’re saying now is that 67% of hotels in this country won’t last six more months. That’s two thirds!”
“Those are scary figures, and they’re even more profound here in New Orleans,” Perry said. “In New York, restaurants are closed until october 1st when they can open at 25% capacity. It’s impossible to make money at 25% or every 50%, we need to get back to 75% at a minimum. There’s so much help needed in the national hotel and restaurant industry. The fact that we have gridlock in Washington has left our small businesses just hanging, and in the inability of people to understand that even if you put the jet plane that is our industry back together, unless you put fuel in it (marketing), they’re not going to make it. What this requires on the part of cities and states is a far greater level of sophisticated thinking than what is happening right now.”
“This ‘wait-and-see’ approach to the election, to see whether or not someone is elected that might provide more money to states and local entities - that’s not a sound strategy by any stretch of the imagination,” Newell said.
“Hope is not a strategy. We need concrete ways to move forward. We’re running out of funding, and we’re not going to have the ability to market New Orleans, even after a vaccine is out, unless we get help from our state government,” Perry said. “But we’re very hopeful that we’ll be able to sit down with President Cortez and Speaker Schexnayder and the monye committee chairs and help figure this out. We have the best solution, and that is to not only supporting businesses with financial help, let’s get their customers back in the door so that capitalism can start working again.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
