Augusta business advocates use mix of old, new tactics to lure consumers back downtown

Georgia's governor allowed restaurants to resume dine-in service more than three weeks ago, yet the tables inside Cafe 209 remain empty.

The Broad Street eatery that was packed with lunchtime patrons just three months ago now faces the same problem as other restaurants in the pandemic era: not enough customers.

A large number of downtown office workers – key consumers for downtown businesses – are still working remotely. And the workers who remain in Augusta’s urban core are likely to be leery of going out; a Datasenntial study last month showed 27% of Americans are still afraid to eat inside restaurants because of the COVID-19 virus.

In the current business environment, Cafe 209 owner Cassandra Brinson said she can't economically justify staffing a dining room where social-distancing mandates leave her with just eight tables.

“It's just not worth it to open,” said Brinson, who started the home-style restaurant 20 years ago.

Brinson is not alone in the struggle. Southern Salad, another Broad Street eatery, said it has gone from serving 80 people a day to less than 20 since the pandemic began.

At Field Botanicals, a shop selling natural and cruelty-free cosmetics, owner Jennifer Tinsley is planning to reopen her 12th Street store to walk-in traffic on Thursday. She stayed afloat during the height of the pandemic by offering curbside pickup and launching an e-commerce site. But revenue is still not what it was pre-pandemic.

“May was a horrific month,” Tinsley said. “I can’t survive two more of those.”

Brinson’s strategy to surviving the pandemic includes limiting operations to three days a week and focusing exclusively on take-out orders, which employees deliver curbside from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

“I can't complain,” she said. “We're doing OK.”

But for how long?

That’s the question worrying economic development officials and business advocates. They see estimates from organizations such as Main Street America, which projects up to one-third of the nation's 30.2 million small businesses are at risk of permanent closure as the coronavirus pandemic plods along.

A survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses in April said six in 10 businesses could fold if the pandemic lasts until Labor Day. A widely cited 2016 study by JP Morgan Chase reports half of all small businesses have enough cash on hand to survive for only 27 days without new revenue.

The virus' economic threat to downtown Augusta’s burgeoning renaissance has officials pivoting from attracting new businesses to protecting the existing ones.

Margaret Woodard, executive director of the Augusta Downtown Development Authority, said downtown would look like it did in the mid-2000s if one-third of its businesses closed.

“We've gone into full-throttle mode of retention and promotion,” Woodard said. “We're working on special programs and doing everything we can to get our small businesses up and running and flourishing.”

The DDA board recently approved transferring $10,000 from a $50,000 Georgia Power donation to fund several downtown marketing initiatives, including a strategic redesign of the authority website and partnering with the Augusta Convention & Visitors Bureau to hire a firm to create promotional public-service ads.

The website will promote resources and assistance available to small businesses. The ads – created by Evans-based TranterGrey Media – will feature several downtown shops and restaurants depicting employees and customers using safety protocols recommended by public health officials.

The message: It's OK to come back downtown.

“We're going to make an effort to remind people that downtown is safe and that we've got a lot of really great restaurants and fun spots,” said Jane Ellis, a DDA board member and commercial real estate agent.

Meanwhile, the CVB – the agency charged with promoting tourism in Augusta – plans to launch a new marketing campaign this summer designed to lure people within a 200-mile radius.

The CVB reports visitors pump more than than $500 million annually into the local economy, with a large share of the spending in downtown's central business district, which houses the city’s convention center and has evolved into the metro area’s arts, entertainment and cultural epicenter during the past several years.

The new campaign, created by the Augusta-based Wier/Stewart agency, promotes the city as a friendly, authentic destination unencumbered by “elbow-to-elbow tourists,” agency partner Daniel Stewart said during a recent presentation to the CVB board of directors.

“We have determined that Augusta is kind of primed as a place that you would visit for a weekend or a couple of days vs. a week,” Stewart said. “A little bit is based on a post-corona world, and we think that we are actually in a pretty unique and fortuitous situation because travel by vehicle is going to be much more popular when things open back up vs. air travel.”

While the CVB prepares to market downtown as comfortable yet compelling, the Augusta Metro Chamber of Commerce is monitoring the exodus of downtown's workforce.

Chamber CEO Sue Parr estimates that more than half of downtown-based employees are either “working at home or not in a traditional office space.” Some downtown workers live in the urban core, but Census data shows most commute from the metro area’s suburbs.

Remote working could become the “new normal” – Parr believes downtown companies may allow home-based employees who have maintained, or increased, their productivity to continue working outside the office.

"We have, obviously, an issue with some of the downtown workforce not coming back," she said. "So you have this chicken-egg situation where the daytime restaurants are not able to fully recapture that business until we have the built-in workforce, that 8-to-5 crowd, return. Restaurants are supported in the evening hours, too, but lunch is very robust for many of our members."

The chamber is revamping its signature group events, such as its Third Thursday Business Builder and the Member Economic Luncheon, to focus on topics specifically designed to help its member businesses adapt to pandemic and post-pandemic consumer behavior.

It also plans to roll out a members-only app this summer that will provide a forum for various industry groups to share information without the clutter found on most social media platforms.

“It takes a lot of time for a business to troll through (social media) for information,” Parr said. “This will be very different. It will be a very close group of people who are not there just to post stuff, but to really use it as a tool for their business.”

The DDA also is thinking outside the box to boost downtown commerce. Authority Chairman Jack Evans said the organization has studied other cities to find creative ways to accommodate consumers during the pandemic.

One of the strategies is to create more open-air dining space by expanding the number of tables on Broad Street sidewalks and closing sections of side streets so clusters of restaurants can create an al fresco experience.

“One thing that other cities, like Tampa, have done is to take it outside,” Evans said. “It’s safer for employees and its safer for patrons.”

The Augusta Commission on Tuesday approved an ordinance allowing Broad Street businesses to extend their storefront sidewalks for dining use as well as temporarily close Broad’s side streets for outdoor dining. The first test of the ordinance was supposed to occur Friday on a section of 10th Street.

The event, organized by Woodard and downtown restaurateurs Brad Usry, Sean Wight, Eric Kinlaw, Allan Soto and bar owner Coco Rubio, would have put 20 tables on a section of 10th Street just south of Broad. The event fell when the permit was rejected by the Richmond County Sheriff’s Office, which cited public safety issues.

Woodard said she will keep pushing city officials to allow outdoor dining, something several Georgia cities, such as Tucker, Dunwoody, Brookhaven and Savannah, are already doing.

“We have to adapt and innovate,” Woodard said. “We’re just going to have to do business differently. If you come back after this (pandemic) and go back to your old ways, you're not going to make it. We've been ushered into a new era.”

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