INDIANAPOLIS–Plywood boards still covered the doors of many downtown Indianapolis businesses Tuesday morning. Those businesses are dealing with a double whammy: the coronavirus pandemic and the riots that happened at the end of May.
Those riots affected more than 100 businesses, with broken glass and wrecked lobbies and dining rooms.
“The biggest thing was getting the boards on the windows and getting things cleaned up,” said Danielle Cooney, general manager of Soupremacy. She said her crew came in the day after the second night of rioting. “We were able to reopen on Monday.”
She said that involved a deep clean, to make sure they had all of the shards of glass up.
Soupremacy was able to reopen with no inside dining. Other businesses were getting ready to reopen their dining rooms. Restrictions from the pandemic had been loosened, and restaurants were being allowed to open at half capacity.
Instead of re-opening that Monday, some restaurants were closed, with boards over the windows and doors. Many of them remained in that state Tuesday, two and a half weeks later, either unable or unwilling to reopen.
Cooney said she believes that some people have been scared away from downtown.
“Moving forward it will be getting the perception that downtown is still safe out to the public,” she said, adding that she believes downtown is safe.
Cooney and her business are fighting two stigmas: one that says restaurants and businesses might not be safe from coronavirus, and one that says it’s not safe to be downtown, especially at night.
Both provide ample obstacles to business.
“We thrive on people in the office buildings. That’s where we’re really hurting because nobody’s back in the office yet,” she said. “Some of the larger corporations, we’re hearing, are not coming back until next year.”
So, they’re keeping the reduced hours they adopted during the pandemic, closing after lunch.
“Until the city gets convention business back, there’s not much point in being open other than that,” she said, adding that they hope to figure out how to transition, at some point, back to being open on weekends and for dinner.
