Verdes Tropicana Bowl is a family-owned bowling alley — a community staple for the past 60 years in West Palm Beach. It has been closed since early March because of the pandemic, leaving dozens of workers furloughed.
When it’ll be allowed to reopen is the “million-dollar question,” says Brett Herman, the general manager.
As restaurants and malls begin to reopen the doors around him, Herman is left waiting for an answer on when the bowling alley’s turn will come. “I guess with every business, it has just been a continuous moving target,” he said.
Bowling alleys, movie theaters, bars, playhouses, arcades and other businesses have been waiting for a green light from both the state and local levels to reopen.
They say it is not just customers who are confused about when more businesses will reopen. They are equally confused themselves by the ever-changing orders and restrictions. And months of waiting have put their businesses and staff under financial strains with no foreseeable end.
Businesses still closed in South Florida include:
Bars, pubs, nightclubs, cocktail lounges, cabarets, banquet halls and breweries.
Movie theaters, concert houses, auditoriums, playhouses, bowling alleys and arcades.
Hot tubs, saunas and steam rooms.
Tattoo shops in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.
Pari-mutuel facilities, such as racetracks.
Deciding when to open
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “Safe. Smart. Step-by-Step. Plan” laid out what businesses could reopen in Florida on May 18. A task force on reopening Florida described to DeSantis what reopening businesses under each phase would look like, though the businesses couldn’t open until the governor’s office issued an executive order. At the local level, counties and cities were allowed to be more restrictive with their reopening plans but not less restrictive than the state’s.
According to the task force’s plan, some still-closed businesses would’ve reopened during the first phase, but that didn’t happen without the governor’s approval. Owners of businesses that must stay closed now are anxiously awaiting news for when they can reopen.
At the Verdes Tropicana Bowl, all 30 of the bowling alley employees were furloughed, and many were ineligible for unemployment benefits because they did not make enough money in the previous year. Some were denied. Some still have not gotten any answer.
Herman said the bowling alley received a Paycheck Protection Program loan and has begun to bring him and employees back over the last two weeks to continue renovations before its reopening.
The business owners cut costs in any way they could by canceling recurring orders, suspending bowling memberships the business pays for and reducing the utilities bill as much as possible, Herman said.
“We recognized right up front that this could have a devastating financial impact,” Herman said. “We really went over everything with a fine-tooth comb to cut anything non-essential so that we could reopen when the time was right.”
With the close proximity of lanes, contact with different bowling balls and the scoring system, Herman said he understands the decision to keep bowling alleys closed.
“The big thing is that there is a closeness and a proximity we have during the height of our bowling season,” Herman said. “We would have the entire center packed from end to end, all 32 lanes in use, almost to the point where you couldn’t even move in here.”
Tattoo parlors
Chico Cortez closed the doors to his tattoo shops in Miami on his own accord on March 16. By that time, no city or county officials had forced him to close, but with the best interest of his employees and clients in mind, the shop halted its appointments and walk-ins.
It’s now been nearly three months since Chico’s Marked For Life closed. Broward will allow tattoo parlors to reopen Monday. But there is no date yet for when tattoo shops can reopen in Miami-Dade, said County Mayor Carlos A. Gimenez.
According to the state’s official business information portal, tattoo shops are listed as personal care services along with hair and nail salons and barber shops. But Cortez said he is unsure why tattoo shops were not allowed to reopen with these businesses May 18.
As a result, they feel invisible, or as Cortez described it, “less than non-essential.”
That led Cortez to ask one question: “Why are we less?”
“It feels like what I do is meaningless,” Cortez said.
Aside from about $2,900 in government-issued stimulus checks, Cortez has had no income since March. Many of his 20 employees, who are independent contractors, were not eligible to receive unemployment checks. They have had to commission paintings and artwork instead of booking appointments each day, Cortez said.
Though he qualified for a Paycheck Protection Program loan, Cortez said there isn’t much money left after payouts and rent as it inches toward nearly three months that his two shops were closed.
Cortez planned to open a third shop in Georgia and saved up about $38,000 to do so. After dipping into the savings, Cortez said the would-be shop is another casualty of the coronavirus. The remaining $19,000 will be used to sustain him and his family until he can return to work.
With gloves, masks and other personal protective equipment being everyday items in tattoo shops and with artists being trained in areas like blood-borne pathogens and communicable diseases, Cortez believes tattoo artists are well prepared to reopen.
When Cortez can open his shop, there will be no more than five artists working at one time and customers will no longer be allowed to bring someone with them to their appointment. There will be extra booths between each artists’ work area to ensure 6 feet of space separates them, Cortez said.
On one day, artists will use the left side of the shop and the right side the next so that each side of the store can be sanitized for 24 hours, Cortez said. No guest will enter the shop without a mask, their temperatures will be taken and they will fill out their release forms on a mobile app rather than being handed papers.
Ric Barrick, a Broward County spokesman, said the county decided to close tattoo shops because of the higher number of COVID-19 cases in relation to the rest of Florida. Broward reassessed that decision and ultimately decided to let the tattoo parlors reopen Monday.
Broward County Commissioner Barbara Sharief said some businesses still are closed because of the high-contact nature of the activities.
In bowling alleys, the tables and chairs, shared balls and communal shoes are all surfaces that could spread the coronavirus more easily than in other businesses, Sharief said.
Movie theaters will face challenges with social distancing, such as ensuring guests wear face coverings while watching a movie and keeping seating 6 feet apart.
“We’ve heard from every business sector not included,” Sharief said. “We’re trying as best as we can and as safely as we can to get everything opened back up. It has hit the whole community. No portion of the community has not been hit by COVID-19.”
Palm Beach County Mayor Dave Kerner said the path to reopening is a “meticulous” one for businesses.
For bowling alleys, movie theaters and others still closed, Kerner said a firm reopening date has not been determined. By looking at the coronavirus testing metrics, decisions to reopen are being made in real-time by the governor’s office.
“As these places are authorized to reopen, they’re going to go through that process working with the county, and then we’ll send that plan up to the governor, and they’ll approve it. It’s a very meticulous process,” Kerner said.
Among the other businesses that have dealt with a confused reopening were licensed massage establishments.
Ashley Spurlock, spa director at the Westin fort Lauderdale Beach Resort, said massage therapists should be back at work by now because they are defined as health care practitioners in the Florida statutes and that by Florida’s definitions, licensed massage services are recognized as a medical service.
Spurlock said because DeSantis’ executive order issued April 29 allowed health care practitioners to return to work, massage therapists were confused by local orders keeping them closed. Broward’s latest order, on Friday, cleared up the issue by also allowing massage parlors to reopen Monday.
Taking precaution
Dr. Mary Jo Trepka, the Florida International University Department of Epidemiology chairwoman, said risks of being exposed to the coronavirus are directly related to how close people get to one another and how crowded those businesses can be.
“The safest types of exposure are being outdoors,” Trepka said. “Or if you have to be indoors, just a very limited number of people and keeping people 6 feet away and wearing masks.”
Even local officials are unsure of what is coming down the pipeline, Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner Heather Moraitis said.
South Florida cities have to wait for the counties to approve what can reopen, and until then, cities have little authority. For the businesses still closed, they will have to wait for an executive order from the governor’s office and a local order from the county clearing them to open, Moraitis said.
“When someone says this is what could reopen in a Phase 1 or what could reopen in a Phase 2 or what could reopen in a Phase 3, it doesn’t take effect until it is an executive order,” Moraitis said. “We don’t really know what is coming until it comes either.”
There is currently no set date for Phase 2 to start, but more businesses can reopen in the next phase once DeSantis determines it is suitable to continue reopening after consulting with state health officials.
Moraitis said bars and movie theaters will likely be some of the last businesses to open, though some projections hope they may be able to reopen in Phase 2.
“But once again, these are people’s businesses, and if they really limit their capacity, maybe they limit their hours a little bit, we should allow them to start operating also in a safe way,” Moraitis said.
