Polito Hears How Lenox Businesses Pulled Through Pandemic
LENOX, Mass. — Lt. Governor Karen Polito took a stroll around historic downtown Lenox and spoke to business owners about their push through the COVID-19 pandemic.
Polito, who was joined by State Rep. Smitty Pignatelli, was impressed with the amount of activity on Main street, Walker Street, and Church Street during her visit Tuesday but recognized the resilience that it took for these proprietors to persevere in the last year and a half.
Polito heard from a variety of business owners who spoke about utilizing curbside pickup, long and tireless days of providing service, a lack of staffing, and even the pandemic's negative effect on the housing market.
Loeb's Foodtown of Lenox continued to provide grocery items to the community seven days a week and even adopted curbside delivery for a safe shopping experience.
"Getting through was showing up every day, that's the hard part. I mean, just showing up every day, our last day off was January 1, one day," owner of Bernie Fallon said. "The hard part is employees, and you hear it everywhere, our blessing has been teenagers."
Fallon explained that fourteen to sixteen-year-olds with working papers have been a "huge help" throughout the pandemic.
Fallon's wife Isabel said that she was concerned about her and her husband working so many hours to support the store, but they had to do it.
Loeb's adopted curbside and delivery options for groceries last year and now have around three delivery drivers so that they can continue to offer the contactless option.
Owner of The Bookstore Matthew Tannenbaum explained to Polito that his 45-year-old operation stayed open through donations on the GoFundMe platform.
Tannenbaum created the fundraiser titled "Save The Bookstore" in August of 2020 and surpassed his $120,000 goal by around $4,000.
"We succeeded very uniquely because we had a GoFundMe back in July. We closed down in March, by July, I figured, oh, I don't have any money left so another couple of weeks in August, we arranged for a GoFundMe campaign," he said. "We put out the word on a Tuesday afternoon, by Wednesday, so 23 hours later, we hit our goal of $60,000 in 23 hours, because the money kept coming in and went up to $120,000, and so we're pretty safe right now, and then we stayed closed until June."
Until Tannenbaum was comfortable opening up to the public, he offered curbside pickup to readers.
He said that both the locals and summer residents who have been visiting the store for generations helped him raise the funds to stay alive through the pandemic.
Polito agreed that there has been an influx of visitors turned residents in Berkshire County.
"It's a changing demographic here in the Berkshires as a result of this pandemic," Polito said. "People have come here and decided 'maybe I'm not going to go where I was' and staying here year-round."
Tannenbaum gifted Polito with a book by Leo Connellan titled "Massachusetts Poems," and Polito also purchased a book from the store.
Bistro Zinc was able to keep its staff with the help of Payroll Protection Program (PPP) loans and continued to stay open seven days a week.
The eatery employs about 30-40 staff members and survived off of takeout service when indoor dining was shut down.
"We had one of the busiest summers in the history of the restaurant," owner Jason Macioge said about this summer, adding that he hopes the trend continues into the fall.
Owner of Piretti Real Estate Mary Jo Piretti identified housing market issues with people buying houses to make into full-time AirBnB's and the number of childless families that are relocating to Lenox.
Piretti said she has had 24 sales already this year and only three of the buyers had children.
"You can't have 25 people moving into this community and only three of them have kids in the school system," she said. "It's just not healthy for the community."
She said she saw the trend of buying houses for vacations rentals as problematic in part because it strays away from the idea of neighborhoods with abutters that are familiar with one another. With vacation rental houses, Piretti said, people never know who their neighbors are.
Another issue that was identified in the housing market was the price of homes. Out of the families who bought homes from Piretti this year, two spent over $700,000 and one family spent a moderate price on a home that requires extensive renovations.
She said that she found it problematic that affordable housing efforts and centered around rentals because "renting is not the American Dream" and homeownership gives residents more stake in the community.
Polito assured Piretti that state-wide efforts are being focused on equitable homeownership.
"We proposed $300 million in a homeownership program for affordable accessible homeownership housing and we would love to see more of that I'm sure this community definitely benefit from that," she said.
The Lt. Governor also stopped by the Lenox Library to deliver a citation to Local History Librarian Amy Lafave from Governor Baker thanking the organization for their continued services to the community.
"We value everything about municipal leadership," Polito said about Baker and herself, who both previously served as local officials in their hometowns.
"And clearly the services that you provide through the library are very meaningful to your community and accessible to all ages, it's a vital service that's really important, thank you for stewarding it and being such a big part of the success that the library has."
This stop was one of three appearances that Polito made in Western Massachusetts. Earlier in the day, she and Governor Baker held a press conference in Easthampton to announce the latest round of Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness (MVP) Grant awards, and later in the day, they traveled to Becket to celebrate the town's new broadband infrastructure.
Tags: lieutenant governor,
