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HomeMy WebLinkAboutDODD, KEVA 072920 Marie Sunseri From:Keva Dodd <keva@whimhouse.com> Sent:Wednesday, July 29, 2020 9:38 AM To:Marie Sunseri Subject:For the good of the Town - Street Closure ***CAUTION*** This email originated from outside of the Town of Danville. Do not click on links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. To our City Council, My name is Keva Dodd, owner of Whim House, a retail store in the historic district of Danville. I would like to thank you all for the tremendous job you have done to support all businesses in Danville during our Shelter in Place order. I know there are a lot of moving parts during this unprecedented time and a couple of unfortunate step backs in the course of things. The Hartz street closure is a great action by the council. It has further helped restaurants generate revenue. Although it does not make up for the many weeks of being shut down, it does offer them an opportunity to serve our community, be competitive with nearby cities that are offering outdoor dining and keep their business open. I don't believe we can afford one restaurant to permanently close their doors as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. We also cannot afford to lose any retailers or other businesses as well, so I would ask for you to look at fine-tuning the details to the street closure. As a result of the street closure, my Friday and Saturday evenings are generating revenue when I stay open until 8-9 pm. Saturday at my store during the day remains steady albeit different than before COVID. However, on Friday mornings and early afternoons, my business has just fallen off. Further, deliveries of goods are often pushed out to Monday, and I am missing important weekend sales opportunities with products anticipated for the weekend. On Friday's most of our restaurants are not serving breakfast and lunch. There is limited use of the street closure. Similarly, on Sunday, most of the restaurants have not been serving brunch or lunch during the pandemic, so there is also limited community use on this day. What is important for you to hear is our community is loving the street closure when they are here on Friday and Saturday evenings. We need to support this by enforcing mask-wearing. Can we have town volunteers remind people to wear masks and perhaps even hand out masks to those who are not wearing them? And lastly, If we could implement better signage at both ends of the closed street that explained Hartz is a walking street this would help people understand the closure and perhaps their inconvenience of having to detour. Could we put something on the roadblocks that said, "Welcome to our safe walking zone." This way our community knows so much more than the street is closed. Thank you for allowing me to voice my feedback, concerns, and ideas to make this even more successful. I would hope we can keep this going, perhaps through November 1st. 1 Keva Dodd -- Whim House 485 Hartz Avenue Danville, CA 94526 2