Status Update - What's Your Backup Plan, Part III: The Downtown Construction Project Has Begun

As regular followers of this blog no doubt are aware of by now, we had a flooding event here at the Red Dragonfly Gallery, back on October 10th of this year.

This gave rise to several articles about the importance of "having a backup plan," and how to cope with the challenges and unexpected events brick-and-mortar businesses often face.

Of course, the timing on such a disaster is never "good," no matter what.

And now it's a new year, and we're at it again!

When it Rains, it Pours...

In our case, the timing of the flooding event could not have been much worse: We had to close the gallery for nine days while cleaning up from the flood, while we incurred lots of unbudgeted additional expenses at a time when it was particularly important for us to have a really strong 4th quarter, sales wise.

Why?

Well, we already knew that the beginning of January 2018 we would be facing a six-month long downtown beautification and infrastructure improvement project... an event that would seriously disrupt traffic flow, tear up the street and sidewalks in front of our location, and generally disrupt downtown shopping until the end of June.

Not only will the street be reduced to one lane of traffic, controlled by flaggers, but all the main street parking will be completely out of circulation for six months. 

Naturally, the prospect of more setbacks for the Red Dragonfly is worrisome. How much will this affect our flow of visitors? Will we lose all our walk-in foot traffic? Will our regular clients make the effort to come and find us... or will they be putting off visits to the downtown area till the project is done?

These are all good questions.

The "Big Dig" is Here!

Already during the last few days of December it became clear that the disruption was imminent: A number of people with hard hats and clipboards were walking around, spray painting colorful markings on the street and sidewalks. In some respects it was interesting to see how the street would become narrower and the sidewalks wider... but it was also quite obvious that there would be a lot of digging.

When we came to town on New Year's Eve, there were suddenly lots of "No Parking at ANY time" signs everywhere.

And now, things have begun!

We have dubbed the project "The Big Dig" because a large part of the project will be dedicated to modernizing the infrastructure of our mostly 1860's-1890's downtown area which has long been in desperate need of updates to wiring and sewers. So from a purely functional perspective, this is definitely a project whose time has come.

The "short version" of what we're facing for the next six months, is street and sidewalks dug up and trenched to replace and update sewer and water service that has not been significantly touched since the 1950s. As part of the process, things like cable and electric service will also be taken from "overhead" to "underground."

In addition, the city leaders decided that they wanted to use the disruption to also make an approximately 7-block long stretch of our main street more pedestrian friendly; specifically from the State Ferry terminal where many of our visitors arrive to the center of downtown-- where our gallery is located. 

The end result will be a narrower street with fewer parking spaces, but wider sidewalks with more space for people to sit and linger. 

Much as we-- and many downtown merchants-- are distressed by the impact the project will have, it is ultimately a necessary project; and one of the targeted areas is improving the very drainage systems whose failure caused our gallery to flood, back in October.

Poor Communication from "Officialdom"

Our concerns are not lessened by the fact that the city representatives have been less than informative and forthcoming with such things as specific dates and impacts, and what will be done to mitigate the impact for the many downtown shops that will be hidden behind construction fences.

Even though there were a series of meetings for the public back in the fall, the construction managers actually disclosed relatively little about the process ahead. In fact, there wasn't even a reasonably good "artists rendering" of the final result to be found, so we are still guessing somewhat at what is really going to happen.

And Who's Going to Help the Merchants?

Following in the footsteps of "poor communication," we have also been pretty much unable to ascertain whether there will be any sort of support available to our main street merchants. 

All in all, about 50 street level businesses will be directly affected by this project... a project that not only will limit parking near shops, but will also make access more difficult as a result of dug up sidewalks. 

Now, I'm not saying that the city should be paying our rent while this stuff is going on, but it would be nice to know if there were funds set aside for advertising and public relations campaigns while the disruptions last. Otherwise, this becomes an equation that really doesn't work very well: The merchants will all experience declining sales, while having to spend more money on promotion to draw attention to themselves.

I have previously owned a gallery that was adjacent to a highway improvement project for a couple of years, so I know from experience that we can probably expect a 20-30% drop in sales.

So far, the only organized effort we're aware of has been put together by our "Downtown Association," who are normally just involved primarily in the business of spreading historical information to visitors.

The thing that feels a little absurd here is that we have an ongoing project that may threaten the survival of a large number of retail and food businesses... in a town that's heavily dependent on the tourist trade-- and their shopping dollars-- as a means of bringing in city revenues through sales taxes and such.

Having a bunch of stores close their doors isn't really in the best interest of anyone... including the Powers That be!

What Can One DO, in Such a Situation?

Our worst case scenario assumption is that we might lose as much as 50% of our in-store business during the six month construction period. So for the past six months, we've been setting about the challenge of how to replace half our cash flow from other sources.

Our original decision to give our gallery a presence on Steemit back in June was one of several actions we took to find creative ways to supplement our income. 

My wife is a life coach, counselor and psychic intuitive for her "day job" and we decided that using the gallery premises to host a series of weekly evening workshops would be another way to bring in new revenue. Since the construction ends around 5:30pm and downtown offices empty out around the same time, having 7:00pm workshops every Thursday would present minimal access and parking issues.

Similarly, trying to take advantage of the evening time slots, we are planning "meet the artist" evenings. These won't be formal shows and "openings," but rather an informal way for fans and patrons to come by and hang out with the artists.

Finally, we are working to "beef up" our online presence, using our web site and social media profiles as something more than just a marketing tool, but also a selling tool-- starting in mid-January, our "Daily Art" feature will run across all our platforms; Facebook, Steemit, twitter, Instagram and more. The theme here will be show the art, talk about the art and artist, keep it very "accessible" (price wise) and if someone is moved, make it available to purchase there and then.

Will it Be Enough?

We are feeling cautiously optimistic. 

Our situation is made a little more precarious by the fact that we incurred a loss in the thousands as a result of the flood in October, and as of yet we have not received any kind of compensation for that. Since our insurance didn't cover, we're waiting for a possible settlement from the city's insurance carrier. 

Hopefully, that settlement will happen within the next 30-60 days.

In the meantime, we go forward and hope for the best! Thankfully, we have a great group of neighbors in our little shopping arcade, and we're all doing our best to come up with creative ideas to encourage people to come visit us during the construction period.

All the photos in this post were taking this morning (January 4th), before any of the "serious" digging has really started.

Thank you for reading! Red Dragonfly is a proud member of the @sndbox creative initiative.

The Red Dragonfly is an independent alternative art gallery located in Port Townsend, WA; showcasing edgy and unique contemporary art & handmade crafts by local and worldwide artists. All images are our own, unless otherwise credited. Where applicable, artist images used with permission.