I grew up in NYC and it breaks my heart to see what's happening in what once was a truly magical place.
Many of my business owner clients have new, seemingly arbitrary rules to abide by or face brutal fines and even closure. There have already been altercations as the business owners are having to call the police to remove paying customers for "trespassing" because they refused to produce proof of covid-19 injection. Since this issue is loaded with plenty of political TNT I'd prefer to just examine it from a secular, business point of view.
"Since 2015, average asking rents in many retail corridors have collapsed by 50% to 73%, including in some of the most ridiculously expensive corridors. That 73% collapse in the average asking rent for street-level retail stores over the past six years occurred in the Times Square area – Broadway and 7th Avenue, between 42nd Street and 47th Street in Midtown"
Running a business profitably has never been easy but now for retail, service & hospitality businesses in some jurisdictions like LA & NYC it has become a nightmare which no one knows how to plan for. Add to all that the extra uncertainty of legal liability; "what happens if someone sues me because they caught covid in my store?". Can we talk about extra costs for security, hygiene,etc? Like the old Christmas card once said from Guadalajara: "Send more money, guns, lawyers!"
The extra costs in money and time needed to respond to these imposed changes is incalculable, it doesn't seem as if it's going to better there soon either:
“Leases continue to take longer to reach completion. A small subset of retailers – primarily QSR [quick service restaurants], clicks-to-bricks and some health and wellness – are in expansion mode. Most other tenants do not have any sense of urgency. Build out is frequently delayed by construction labor shortages, a lack of materials or even slower lender approval. Finding and training staff is a challenge. Finally, supply chain shortages can impede product offerings.”
Also, inflation is hurting all venues and jurisdictions as well but the (bad) numbers are actually worse:
"CPI numbers are manipulated and have been since the 1990’s when calculation methods were changed and certain unsavory factors were removed. If we look at inflation according to the original way of calculation, it is actually double that reported by the government today."
The best weapon for business owners now is flexibility, efficiency and fixed rate working capital.
I can help with immediate, fixed rate capital over terms up to 24 months. Using immediate capital earlier this year helped some of my business owners to maintain their margins all year since they purchased at early-2021 prices. The price you pay for the capital I offer will stay the same for the entire term, the items you use it for will likely have increased way more much like just about everything already has now for 9 months.
Make no mistake, this isn't over by a long shot!