Small cities and towns have spent decades trying to revive their faded Main Streets. The pandemic threatened to undo those renewal efforts, and no more so than in Wilkes-Barre, a city of 41,400 people in northeastern Pennsylvania.
We spent the last four months photographing four blocks along the south end of Main Street to capture the pandemic’s impact on downtown Wilkes-Barre.
When office workers and college students cleared out, and the economy ground to a halt, small businesses in downtown Wilkes-Barre expected the worst.
What followed was months of uneven recovery. A few businesses closed, but others were able to adapt to the pandemic — stores offered curbside pickup and restaurants shifted to takeout — and remain afloat.
Many businesses here, like Marquis Art & Frame, at 122 South Main Street, have faced adversity before, but the shutdowns and uncertainty about when they would end felt overwhelming. Yet, most business owners stuck with it.
In its 46 years, Marquis has survived a fire, a flood, vandalism and now Covid. There are 11 employees on the job, the same number working at the shop last March. “I have total faith that downtown Wilkes-Barre will come back,” the store’s owner, Ken Marquis, said.
Main Street is not a place dominated by chic restaurants or perfectly manicured sidewalks. On many blocks sit empty storefronts and businesses that seem suited to a bygone era.
Even before the pandemic, the city had to work hard to keep its downtown vibrant and create a sense of place to compete with the strip malls and big-box stores lining the highways.
Wilkes-Barre, roughly 100 miles northwest of Philadelphia, is known as the Diamond City because of its reliance on coal production in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was a magnet for European immigrants, who came to work in the nearby mines or in the ancillary businesses fueled by coal. Most notably, two Italian men founded Planters Peanuts in Wilkes-Barre in 1906 and the company had its headquarters on South Main Street for years. With the coal industry in steep decline after World War II and city dwellers relocating to the suburbs, Wilkes-Barre's downtown began to struggle. Then, in 1972, businesses suffered a devastating hit during a large flood.
And yet, Main Street endured. New immigrants — this time from places like the Carribean and Mexico — have taken advantage of cheap rents to open up businesses. The multi-level Boscov’s department store survived the onslaught of suburban shopping malls and the internet. Wilkes University and King’s College expanded their presences downtown, creating more demand for restaurants and bars.
The shoe department at Boscov’s.
Susan Shafer with a customer at the Boscov’s jewelry counter.
John Marco, a Boscov’s human resources manager.
A family stroll in the Public Square.
Still, this downtown ecosystem was fragile and it faced its biggest test starting last March.
“The pandemic,’’ said Larry Newman, executive director of the Diamond City Partnership, a nonprofit involved in revitalizing downtown Wilkes-Barre, “was like an asteroid heading toward earth.”
Main Street businesses across the country were especially imperiled by the shutdowns. They rely almost entirely on foot traffic and only a fraction had e-commerce operations. Rescuing small businesses, which make up more than 40 percent of the U.S. economy, was seen as imperative for leaders in Washington and small cities like Wilkes-Barre.
“We already had to learn how to reinvent Main Street once after the decline in retail,’’ Mr. Newman said. “Now we have to figure out how to get through this.”
To help stay open during the starts and stops and starts of lockdowns, businesses in downtown Wilkes-Barre received $21 million in loans through the federal Paycheck Protection Program, the largest stimulus effort in the nation’s history.
The loans went to about 150 recipients, including a taxi service, a dentist office and multiple restaurants.
Business at the Istanbul Grill, at 40 South Main Street, was down 60 percent last year. But a P.P.P. loan of roughly $4,600 helped cushion the blow.
Elif Kacar started Istanbul Grill four years ago. Her friend, a professor at nearby King’s College, had encouraged her to relocate from Queens, because “they needed more Mediterranean food here,” she said.
Carleen Hartman moved to Wilkes-Barre from New York after she lost her job in finance as a result of the last recession in 2008. Originally from Jamaica, she and her husband started selling Carribean jerk chicken in a parking lot along Main Street and then moved into 72 South Main as their clientele grew.
When the pandemic hit, Ms. Hartman said, “We were in shock.”
Carleen Hartman, owner of Hartman Jerk Chicken.
But she quickly adapted, building a take-out window and using GrubHub and other food delivery services after her customers started asking for them. She took out a roughly $2,000 P.P.P. loan.
“I knew we would get through this,’’ she said. “My grandfather used to say Salvation is forever. But nothing else is forever.”
Kaya Kocabas, chef at Istanbul Grill.
The mixed platter and Turkish coffee at Istanbul Grill.
Elif Kacar, and her husband, Enis, the owners of the restaurant.
The fate of Main Street will in many ways be determined by how many white-collar workers return to office and university buildings — and by how many people choose to live downtown.
Residential development is booming. More than 150 new units are either being built or are planned for construction. Some vacant offices are being converted into homes. Real estate brokers say more people living downtown could help make up for the loss of office workers.
Still, Mr. Newman and local officials have worked with varying levels of success to fill the retail void, or at least keep it from worsening. They provided grants to restaurants, for instance, to create seating for outdoor dining.
There are opportunities for new businesses to move in. The rent for the vacant storefront at 91-93 South Main Street, two doors down from Bell Furniture, is roughly $9.25 a square foot. That compares to $120 a square foot in downtown Philadelphia, according to CBRE.
In a survey last April, more than half of the downtown Wilkes-Barre businesses that responded said they were at risk of closing permanently. In the end, only six did — most of them restaurants.
Many American Main Streets have weathered the pandemic. After some early stumbles, the Paycheck Protection Program has funneled $799 billion, totaling more than 11 million loans, to businesses across the country.
Low interest rates and falling rents have also aided entrepreneurship. A survey by the National Main Street Center of several hundred communities found that for every business that closed in a city the size of Wilkes-Barre, 1.4 new ones opened up. That ratio was lower in larger cities, at 1.1 new businesses for every one that closed.
Cameron English, the owner of a pet store called CDE Exotics, bought a five-story building at 95 South Main Street a few months before the pandemic and moved his business in. During the pandemic, the store offered curbside pet adoptions, with Mr. English saying ball pythons, bearded dragons and leopard geckos were especially popular.
Cameron English, owner of CDE Exotics, with an alligator.
A hypo green burmese python.
Oogie-Boogie, a sulcata tortoise.
Albert Benedict cleaning rabbit cages.
But some businesses were already in decline before the lockdowns, and their owners decided it was time to move on. One that didn’t make it was Tony Bonczewski’s shoe-repair shop. He started as a shoeshine boy at 15 and had been repairing shoes in downtown Wilkes-Barre since the early 1960s. For many years, his shop was on Public Square in the heart of Main Street.
When the law offices and a large insurance company closed early in the pandemic, Mr. Bonczewski went days without customers.
In February, Mr. Bonczewski closed down his shop. He said he wasn’t sure what he was going to do in retirement. “The older people are all gone. That was my base,’’ he said. “They passed on before me. I am surprised I am still here.”
Shortly after he closed, Mr. Bonczewski died at 91.
Since those early months of the pandemic, a few new restaurants have opened and others are planning to, including a Mexican place and a pizza parlor.
Mr. Newman attributes the relatively few business failures to the government loans and “the grit, creativity and stubbornness of many of our small-business owners – and the loyalty of their patrons.”
Boscov’s, a Main Street stalwart for decades, was closed for three months during the pandemic. “Once we reopened, people came back,’’ the store’s owner, Jim Boscov, said. “Even in a downtown location where our clientele is slightly older, they supported us.”
But in January, Boscov’s shut down a restaurant in the store’s basement that had served scrambled eggs and bottomless coffee, often to older customers with time on their hands. Mr. Boscov said the company would use the space to fulfill online orders.
Mr. Newman compares the downtown’s current condition to people who have lingering symptoms from the virus.
“I’ve begun to worry that many Main Street businesses may face a sort of economic equivalent of Covid long-haul,” he said. “Making it through the shutdowns only to confront a persistent, longer-term struggle.”
The lunch rush at Circles on the Square.
Inside Circles on the Square.
Brenda Sokolowski has reasons to be hopeful. She started making sandwiches at Circles on the Square, a popular downtown lunch spot, 14 years ago.
After the store’s owners died, the family asked her if she wanted to buy the business. She and her husband closed on the deal in December 2020, just as the coronavirus was surging again in Wilkes-Barre.
“It was like, ‘Should we do this?’” said Ms. Sokolowski, 58. “And then we decided, let’s do it. Let’s just make it ours and we can take it from there.”
During the shutdown, her husband delivered sandwiches to people who were working from home. As some workers have returned to their downtown offices a few days a week, they have started coming back to Circles for their favorites — fried fish and tuna noodle casserole.
“We tried to keep it as consistent as we could,’’ she said. “It was our bit of normal in all the chaos.”
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