Md. business owners cope, prepare for more wintry weather 

Posted: 4:23 pm Mon, February 8, 2010
By Danielle Ulman, Robbie Whelan and Liz Farmer
Daily Record Business Writers

The massive snowstorm that kept many Marylanders huddled inside all weekend slowed the start of the workweek Monday as local governments tried to clear the roads of ice and snow.

The weekend’s storm covered the region’s neighborhoods with accumulations between 2 and 3 feet of snow making many streets impassable.

Baltimore City’s offices opened for business at 10 a.m. on Monday, and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake released a statement saying, “The recovery is underway.”

The city reported that as of 8:30 a.m. Monday, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Public Works had plowed more than 71 percent of Baltimore’s secondary roads at least once, and 30 percent of them had been plowed two or more times.

On the retail front, stores and shopping malls closed early Friday, stayed closed Saturday and some opened late on Sunday. By Monday, many shops were back on regular hours and staffed.

And for many families, it was just in time.

“We have a mall full of people with cabin fever,” said Wendy Ellis, director of marketing for Arundel Mills Mall.

“There are lots of families with kids running around, our food court’s doing great business; there are definitely people who got out and needed to get out,” she said.

Although most stores were staffed, Ellis said shoppers were encouraged to call ahead to the shops they planned on visiting as some retailers’ employees were still stuck at home and unable to open.

At LAX World in The Shops at Kenilworth in Towson, it was a busier Monday than usual after being closed all weekend, according to assistant manager Charles Bardo.

“I think people are just trying to catch up on the weekend shopping; the season starts soon and we’re getting more snow on Tuesday, so they’re getting out when they can,” he said.

Most major malls in the area closed Saturday, including White Marsh Mall, The Mall in Columbia, Owings Mills Mall, Towson Town Center, Mondawmin Mall, Village of Cross Keys and Harborplace & The Gallery. Maryland Retailers Association President Tom Saquella said the damage to retailers could have been worse.

“It certainly had an impact but it was far, far less than the impact with the snow on the Saturday before Christmas,” he said. “For the most part, January-February is one of slowest seasons so, yes it’s going to hurt some, but not as much as in December.”

Ellis, who has been managing malls for 15 years, said weather closings such as this past weekend’s don’t hamper overall sales.

“Every market I’ve been in, when you get a big snow storm that forces you to close, it comes back in the weeks that follow,” she said.

Even with Valentine’s Day this weekend and another snow storm in the works for Tuesday night and Wednesday, Saquella said as long as roads are clear by Thursday or Friday for shoppers to buy their gifts and for restaurants to be fully staffed on Saturday night, the effect should be minimal for retailers.

Those in the business of caring for people could not afford to shut their doors during the storm or in its aftermath. In inclement weather, hospitals often issue requests for people with four-wheel drive vehicles to ferry employees to work.

That was the case at Anne Arundel Medical Center, where more than 100 employees requested rides for the Sunday morning shift alone, said spokesman Justin Paquette.

“We have a roster of drivers that have helped us in the past, people with 4x4s that have been gracious enough to volunteer to get our employees into work,” he said. “Our doors never close, so we need our clinical workers here.”

The hospital is able to strategically deploy volunteers based on its list so drivers in the northern part of the county aren’t asked to shuttle in an employee on the Eastern Shore, he said.

The Anne Arundel Medical Center also has deals with local hotels where hospital employees can get discounted rates so they can stay over at a location close to the hospital so they can make it safely to and from work.

Financial firms like T. Rowe Price Group Inc. in Baltimore need to be open, but the business is structured to handle situations that might keep people from getting to work.

“We certainly are open because the markets are open, and when the markets are open we have to be in business and here to service our clients,” said Brian Lewbart, a company spokesman.

“The way we’ve arranged things from a business continuity standpoint, we have the ability to divert phone calls to Colorado or Tampa,” he said. “We do the same thing with blizzards in Colorado or hurricanes in Tampa.”

Others at T. Rowe can work remotely, so staying home is not a problem when road conditions are poor.

“If you can make it into work and you can do so safely, we hope you’ll make it in,” Lewbart said. “But at the same time, we understand that there are people, who, even if they wanted to come to work, just couldn’t make it in.”

At Price’s Pratt Street headquarters, Lewbart said it seemed that a “substantial” number of people had opted to work from home.

Down the street at money management firm Legg Mason Inc., the policy was much the same on Monday. Mary Athridge, a company spokeswoman, said some employees made it to work while others could not get in and were working remotely.

With roads and construction sites still clogged Monday, construction industry professionals said that work had been put on hold.

Chris Wilson, a project superintendent with Hensel Phelps Construction Co., said that most of the work being done on construction sites was just digging out equipment and clearing the ground.

“We don’t anticipate 30 inches of snow at a shot. We spend a significant amount of money just making it safe to get back to work,” he said. “Some of our job sites have a real scaled-back crew, just clearing the site.”

Hensel-Phelps is the lead contractor for much of the work being done at Fort George G. Meade, which is seeing a huge influx of construction investment as part of the federal BRAC program. Those projects are taking the day off, Wilson said, as a government “weather day,” as project managers focus on scheduling and other paperwork.

Sal Manfre, chief estimator at Baltimore Contractors LLC, said he was spending the day indoors, working on bid packages for new jobs. His company, a Baltimore-based general contractor that does work for the University of Maryland and the state’s Department of General Services, was operating at reduced capacity Monday, and Manfre said he hopes to be “80 to 90 percent effective tomorrow.”

“Anybody who can make [it] in is coming in,” he said. “The jobs are pretty much shut down. There are about three people in the office today … Hopefully it’s not going to be something [that goes on] for weeks. It might just be something for tomorrow or until the next storm comes.”

The next snowstorm is expected to hit Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, threatening to blanket the region with another 5 to 10 inches of snow on top of barely cleared roads.