Chairs inside Fringe Hair in Jamestown sit empty while local business owners look for guidance on reopening plans during the coronavirus pandemic. “Although this virus is hitting me very hard financially, I have concerns about opening personal service businesses like salons too quickly,” said Samantha Cooley, owner of Fringe Hair Salon. Submitted photos

Local government officials are calling on business owners to develop their own reopening plans as Chautauqua County looks for ways to safely lift the COVID-19 economic shutdown currently in place.

Assemblyman Andrew Goodell, R-Jamestown, state Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, and County Executive PJ Wendel have recently discussed using regional risk assessment plans, as well as guidelines from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to safely guide the opening of businesses around the state in stages.

Some local business owners are concerned that the push to reopen is premature, and are awaiting more specific information about the reopening process in order to craft their own plans sensibly.

Samantha Cooley, owner of Fringe Hair Salon in Jamestown, addressed some of these issues in an open letter while laying out possible guidelines for her own industry.

“Although this virus is hitting me very hard financially, I have concerns about opening personal service businesses like salons too quickly,” Cooley wrote. “I have put together a list of what I feel are very reasonable guidelines to return under. In addition to the salon sanitations guidelines required prior to COVID-19, I feel it is safe to reopen when these safety measures will meet and exceed guidelines needed to ensure the safety of workers and clients.”

Included in the new list of precautions for salons would be heavy increases in sanitation and the disinfecting of all surfaces, additional protective equipment and procedures for staff, and various other aspects of social distancing. Appropriate reopening plans are likely to be very different depending on the industry, but even within specific business sectors there is still uncertainty.

Restaurants and food service owners in particular are looking for more specific information before they can consider reopening safely.

“It is hard to come up with the plan when you don’t know the details,” said Dee Scott of Studio D Catering and Venue. “I can come up with a new business plan today, and tomorrow it’s probably not going to work.”

Scott has been in contact with Goodell about plans to reopen and is following daily briefings from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but is still looking for specific requirements in order to make feasible business plan.

“It is very difficult to make any conclusions because we don’t know what is going to happen from day-to-day, which is very frustrating,” Scott said. “I’m just looking for, at a local level, a little more guidance. I will probably be on the tail, very end of the reopening, which is fine for me because I believe it is too early to open at this point. What I am dealing with is, everybody is supposed to be coming up with a business plan to reopen.”

Scott is in a unique position, operating a new 100-person venue in addition to her catering business for large events like weddings. Before she is able to book events with customers, there is a litany of regulations that need to be made clear. These range from staff requirements, proper distances for guests, how to coordinate with other businesses and vendors, food supplies and insurance coverage.

“I haven’t heard anybody mention the food chain,” Scott said. “If they all do (open), all at the same time, and everybody goes out, what is going to happen to our food chain at the grocery stores?”

In the event that reopening requirements include limits on venue capacity, reopening may not be economically viable for certain restaurants and other businesses.

“Even when the state does mandate that we can have people in house I’m sure it’s going to be at a reduced capacity and that might not make sense for our business,” said Peggy Kaltenmeier, owner of Forte restaurant in Jamestown. “To only serve half the people. For a small restaurant like mine every seat matters.”

Like Scott and Cooley, Kaltenmeier is wary of opening without more specific information. “I’m looking for any agency to give us that right now, but I’m not finding that personally,” Kaltenmeier said. “I feel like there needs to be more of a universal guideline for different industries on what we should be doing now, because things have changed drastically in the past few months. I don’t know where that comes from, I would assume the CDC should be releasing some kind of guidelines soon and that will kind of trickle down to the more local health department level. I haven’t seen that yet, I’m eagerly awaiting that because I’m not going to feel comfortable making up my own procedures and sanitation protocols and just crossing my fingers and hoping I’m not going to get someone sick. We don’t ever want to ever get somebody sick.”

Depending on their individual business models, restaurants of different sizes and types will likely have different needs when it comes time to reopen. All of these business owners are used to focusing on the health of their customers, but COVID-19 has forced new emphasis on sanitation.

“I just know being in the restaurant industry, and someone like Sam who is in the salon, and dealing with customers and cleanliness and sanitation, there are procedures and protocols in place,” Kaltenmeier said. It remains to be seen how those normal protocols will change with reopening.

Another significant issue is the availability of testing, both for infections and antibodies in those who may have already had the coronavirus.

“At the end of the day I feel like having more testing done so that we really know how widespread it is (is important),” Kaltenmeier said.