Ice shutdown costs businesses, hourly workers

Mary Moore, founder and chief executive officer of Cook’s Warehouse, said the chain of four stores lost about $70,000 between the two storms. Nine cooking classes were cancelled, including sold-out courses set for Valentine’s Day.

“It’s a big deal,” she said. “My staff, which is hourly, doesn’t get paid when they’re not working. And it takes a lot of additional labor hours calling people to make sure they don’t show up for cancelled classes.”

Some businesses, such as florists and restaurants, are trying to convince consumers to extend Valentine’s Day into next week in their effort to capture dollars they had expected to come rolling in over the last five days, the busiest shopping period of the winter.

Meghann Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the aquarium, said severe weather always holds down attendance, sometimes even after conditions improve.

Yet the attraction this week still had the costs of feeding the fish and housing and feeding 40 staffers to care for the animals, among other things, she noted.

Officials with big conventions such as Cheersport, which opens this weekend at the Georgia World Congress Center with 70,000 cheerleaders and fans, expect they may have to refund entry fees to as many as 10 percent of the 1,100 teams expected, due to problems getting here.

Events such as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s “Built To Amaze!” had to be rescheduled at Philips Arena, while women’s soccer fans were discouraged Thursday from traveling to the Georgia Dome for a match between Russia and the United States unless they could take Marta or were close enough to walk. That meant lower spending on parking and concessions, two key sources of Dome revenue.

The storms came at a time when national retail sales were already struggling. Retail sales fell 4 percent in January, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in part because of rough weather across the country this winter.

For workers, the lost days mean less spending money. More than half of Georgia workers, or 2.1 million people, are paid hourly, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Many were told to stay home during the two storms and weren’t paid.

Some may recoup lost wages by working overtime or extra shifts. Most, though, are out of luck.

Dorothy Chandler, who runs Midtown Assistance Center from a church basement off Peachtree Street, said the interfaith nonprofit has witnessed a 30 percent uptick in clients. They include college grads working for tips in restaurants, retail workers with fewer post-holiday hours and small-business employees hurt by their boss’ struggle with the Affordable Care Act.

The center bought $1,300 in food this week to hand out. Chandler says it won’t last long.

“You can’t turn people down who need food,” she said. “People are just hanging on by a thread.”

More broadly, economist Jeff Humphreys of the University of Georgia worries that the area lost production in this week’s ice storm, particularly because 350,000 utility customers had no power. That shut down offices and even curtailed telecommuting for some.

“People can make do at home for a day or two or three, but then you start to get diminishing returns from working at home,” said Humphreys, director of UGA’s Selig Center for Economic Growth.

“The really productive work gets done first, then the less-productive work. As the storms linger, there’s a decreasing level of productivity.”

Humphreys, however, still expects the state’s GDP to rise 3.1 percent this year, up from 2.5 percent last year. Atlanta job growth should increase 2.8 percent, up from 2.6 percent last year, he said.

Some lost revenue may find its way back into the stream quickly because consumers typically emerge from hibernation ready to spend, said Marc Ginsberg, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Atlanta-based Cardlytics.

They go out to restaurants to eat, visit grocery stores to restock the refrigerator, hit the movies or take children to facilities that let them jump around and work off energy.

That still won’t make up for three, four or five days of lost revenue, he said.

“Retailers never make it (all) up,” Ginsburg said. “There is just so much time in the day.”

PeachMac president Darryl Peck said “this is the last thing we needed as retailers.” Peck said he’d like government officials, who aggressively urged people to stay home during the storm, to now encourage people to get back out.

“You would think that the governor or the chamber of commerce would say, ‘Go out and buy today,’ ” Peck said, “but they’re not and that hurts us.”