Confusion Mounts Among Retail Tenants Lost in Patchwork of Municipal Reopening Rules

Tiger Bachler thought she had covered all her bases when it came time to start reopening her five San Francisco Bay Area clothing boutiques.

The owner of Alys Grace, which has shops in five separate counties within a 25-mile radius, said she had been good about reading through each region's new safety protocols. But when it came time to switch on the lights to start generating revenue to pay the property owner at her last boutique on June 15, Bachler realized her mistake.

"We didn't find out until we reopened in Marin that clients can't try on clothes," the owner said of local Marin County ordinance barring retail customers from bringing items into fitting rooms. "I just made the assumption that the guidelines would be like in San Francisco, since aside from timing, counties have been pretty consistent with their orders. For a retail business, not being able to try something on can be a make-or-break moment."

Six Bay Area counties shut down their economies with a stay-home order at the same time in mid-March as part of efforts stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. The once-unified approach has broken down into a patchwork of new guidelines, regulations and dates as the counties try to reopen.

Similar scenes are playing out in regions across the country as they reemerge from a monthslong lockdown to curb the spread of the pandemic. A 10-minute drive could mean the difference between limited indoor seating for restaurants or takeout only restrictions. Mandates on mask wearing, plexiglass partitions and in-store capacity counts vary widely.

In Michigan, more than 100 executive orders have been issued stemming from the pandemic in the past several months, and the state's reopening process has been divided into eight separate regions rather than by county or city. And after kicking off a statewide reopening plan back in April, individual Texas cities have pushed back by implementing their own restrictions to curb the virus' spread. And with confirmed coronavirus cases rising from Florida to California as businesses reopen, there could be further restrictions coming, adding to the confusion and expenses for retail tenants trying to generate money to pay bills.

When tenants are trying to figure out what to do to reopen their business, "it gets costly, particularly at a time when businesses are suffering financially," said Rufus Jeffris, senior vice president of the local business association Bay Area Council. "Cities, counties and the state need to make it as inexpensive as possible for them to get back to business and not only generate revenue for themselves, but bring back jobs and generate the tax revenue our cities and counties need."

The Bay Area Council has said since the beginning of the shelter-in-place order that counties throughout the state need to have a consistent approach both to the shutdown and California's gradual reopening. Businesses with locations in multiple areas would then be able to enact the same precautions and protocols without incurring any unnecessary expenses, helping to curb the already anticipated rise in closures, vacancies and unemployment.

States banded together regionally in the early days of the pandemic's outbreak across the United States because of the absence of any federal oversight as well as an early lack of scientific research. However, the nonbinding alliances began to unravel as each state faced varying degrees of the virus' severity and faced mounting pressure to reopen their economies as quickly as possible.

Back in (Sort of) Business

On the West Coast, for example, a pact among California, Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Nevada was formed back in late April to create a cooperative approach to easing stay-at-home orders. In the months since, however, states, counties and even individual cities have created their own timelines, stoking confusion among tenants as to what is allowed where and when. Nail salons, gyms and movie theaters got the green light to reopen in Sonoma County June 19, but nearby San Francisco County isn't allowing those businesses to return until sometime in August at the earliest.

"It makes it super complicated and hard to make financial decisions now about how much to bring in when we have no idea what sales will be," Bachler said of navigating the regional crockpot of new restrictions. "It makes scheduling and payroll really complicated, and the scariest thing is trying to hedge whether people will even be out shopping."

From political or economic pressures to initially improving case counts, the reasons for what reopens where has left most businesses scratching their heads.

"Individual municipalities literally change things overnight and expect you to implement them immediately," said Leslie Silverglide, the CEO and founder of the MIXT salad chain, which has locations scattered throughout the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Scottsdale, Arizona. "That means I have to constantly be digging through news sources to find out what we're supposed to do and be as agile as possible. It's always a moving target."

Restaurants, in particular, have been lost in a rising tide of new guidelines and restrictions, with most operators saying they've had little help from the city to prepare for any upcoming changes. Less than a week before outdoor dining was slated to resume in San Francisco on June 15, Mayor London Breed surprised restaurateurs by suddenly moving the date up to June 12.

"How can someone plan like that?" Silverglide said, adding that she's fortunate to have an operations team that can quickly pivot or adopt new guidelines. "It's become all about staying up to date and changing everything we can and implementing things as quickly as possible."

For a business like MIXT that crosses city, county and state lines, Silverglide said she has been able to create an otherwise absent sense of balance by implementing the strictest guidelines among all of her restaurant locations.

"San Francisco has long had the strictest requirements, so we have just applied that across the board," the CEO said. "It basically meant that we put everything in place and have been able to just copy and paste. We're just figuring this out day by day, and this is a point-in-time situation and we will eventually get out of it."