Baltimore business owners are bracing for a difficult spring as authorities clear the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, but many are hopeful the worst disruptions will be short-lived.<\/p>\n
Alex Del Sordo bought the Hard Yacht Cafe, a more than 30-year-old waterfront restaurant with its own small marina, just 10 days before the Dali, a Singaporean cargo ship, smashed into the bridge on March 26, killing two workers and leaving four others presumed dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to fire anybody,\u201d Del Sordo said of his 75 employees Friday. \u201cWe want to keep them here \u2014 working, happy, healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Del Sordo has offered first responders 50% off at the cafe over the past week, which has dented his bottom line. His biggest concerns now are \u201cstabilizing costs for our employment and keeping the lights on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Baltimore is not closed just because the bridge is closed.<\/p>\n
Colin Tarbert, president and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corporation<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The restaurant\u2019s marina, usually booked with pleasure boaters, can\u2019t relocate them to accommodate those involved in the bridge response, he added. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what to do with all the boats out here on our property. We don\u2019t know where they\u2019re going, how they\u2019re gonna get out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hard Yacht is perched on Bear Creek, a waterway feeding into the Patapsco River, which the Francis Scott Key Bridge had spanned for decades. It\u2019s among the businesses in Baltimore\u2019s historic Dundalk neighborhood that are taking a hit from port disruptions while the cleanup continues. Vessel traffic is currently suspended both into and out of the Port of Baltimore, a spokesperson said, though trucks are still being processed out of the marine terminals.<\/p>\n The Army Corps of Engineers plans to open a 35-foot-deep limited access channel near the wreckage to accommodate barges and smaller commercial ships by the end of this month. A deeper 50-foot channel that allows container ships to pass through is expected to reopen by the end of May. Currently, just two channels less than 15 feet deep are open to vessel traffic, which remains minimal.<\/p>\n Some area businesses liken the fallout to the early days of the pandemic, but many say the upheavals of the last few years have prepared them for a crisis of this magnitude. Even so, key parts of the city\u2019s and region\u2019s economy, from trucking to commercial real estate and local restaurants, rely on the port, which handled a record $80 billion worth of foreign cargo last year.<\/p>\n Michael Clark, president of BTR Logistics, which stores and dispatches cargo through the port, said the lost shipments are \u201cgoing to impact probably 75% of our revenues in the short term.\u201d Some vessels whose cargo his warehouse would otherwise accept after arriving in Baltimore are being held internationally for now.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re doing everything we can right now to cut costs and stay alive,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n Colin Tarbert, president and CEO of the Baltimore Development Corporation, an economic development nonprofit, noted that an estimated 20,000 local jobs are tied directly to the port. A top concern for surrounding businesses is how long it will take for port operations to resume at full capacity, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe longer the channel is closed, the more exacerbated the issue is,\u201d Tarbert said. While rebuilding the bridge is expected to take years, he voiced confidence that trucks can take existing routes through the city without much business impact. That may be inconvenient, he conceded, but \u201cBaltimore is not closed just because the bridge is closed.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s going to be a slow two months, but \u2026 the heavy demand for industrial real estate is still there.<\/p>\n Jim Chivers, senior vice president at Gold and Company<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The U.S. Small Business Administration is rolling out low-interest loans to help local employers survive the next couple of weeks. And on Friday, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore signed an executive order providing $60 million in relief funding to businesses and workers affected by the bridge collapse. The aid comes on the heels of $60 million that the U.S. Department of Transportation announced last week to support the rebuilding.<\/p>\n Touring the ongoing response effort in Baltimore on Friday, President Joe Biden reiterated his administration\u2019s support for the recovery process. \u201cThis is gonna take time,\u201d he said, but he vowed that state and federal authorities would work together to \u201crebuild this bridge as rapidly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, Clark said BTR is trying to reroute its incoming cargo shipments, primarily of plywood and steel, to other ports on the East Coast, but getting interstate trucking permits is expensive and time-consuming. The company has applied for an SBA loan but has already had to lay off around a dozen workers.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite frankly, a lot of our customers have made alternative arrangements with different warehouses in different cities,\u201d he said, \u201cand that stuff may never come back through here until we fix this problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The city\u2019s commercial real estate sector doesn\u2019t expect lasting fallout, said Jim Chivers, senior vice president at Gold and Company, a firm serving the Baltimore metro area. \u201cEveryone feels that this is a short-term issue more than a long-term issue,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Even if some clients retreat, Chivers anticipates plenty of interest in filling vacated properties. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be a slow two months, but long-term values I think will continue to remain where they are,\u201d he said. \u201cThe heavy demand for industrial real estate is still there in Baltimore.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Baltimore business owners are bracing for a difficult spring as authorities clear the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge, but many are hopeful the worst disruptions will be short-lived. Alex Del Sordo bought the Hard Yacht Cafe, a more than 30-year-old waterfront restaurant with its own small marina, just 10 days before the Dali, a Singaporean […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2861,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2860"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2860\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}