Gig Harbor, Key Peninsula open for business —with limits— as county wins Phase II status

After a long wait that tried patience and stressed finances, Gig Harbor and the Key Peninsula re-opened for business this week — at least, at a distance of six feet.

The welcome news came last Friday, as Pierce County was cleared to move to Phase II of Gov. Jay Inslee’s “Safe Start” pandemic plan.

That meant many businesses in Gig Harbor were able to re-open, with restrictions, including masking and distancing. Restaurants can resume inside dining, with occupancy limitations.

“This great news,” said Mayor Kit Kuhn. “I’ve been calling our county representative twice a day, waiting for this to happen.”

“This is going to give us hope that we’re going to work our way out of this,” he added. “It will allow many of our businesses to open up right away, and I’m sure it won’t take the others long to get up to speed.”

Also on Friday, Kuhn signed an emergency proclamation temporarily suspending city ordinances governing sidewalk sales, allowing businesses to use the sidewalks for sales and pickups of merchandise.

“Businesses will still need to apply for permits, but we’ll process them in a day or two and waive all the fees,” Kuhn said.

The city action won’t apply to outdoor dining, the mayor said, although that is allowed under Phase II. That permission will have to come from he county Health Department.

Five other counties get OK

Pierce County was among 6 counties approved to move to Phase II on Friday. The others were Clark, Okanogan, Skagit, Snohomish and Whatcom. King County will remain in Phase I, modified to allow some activities.

The news came as a great relief to Peninsula businesses, many of which were hurting badly from lost sales.

“This is the difference between closing up and staying in business,” said Dan Wilson, a luthier who owns All-Star Guitar. “There’s a lot of people whose income is riding on this.”

At the restaurant Moctezuma, chief operating officer Sean Drought said his staff has already been gearing up, preparing disposable menus and QR codes customers can use to guide themselves to tables.

Phase II “won’t get us back to where we were, but gets us moving in that direction,” he said.

Drought said Moctezuma will be calling back to work at least some of its laid-off staff.

Rules for Phase II

Under Phase II, retail businesses can re-open at 30 percent of maximum fire code occupancy, if they place six-foot markers and checkout stands and arrange the flow of customers to avoid choke points and crowding. They must use sneeze guards at checkout and frequently sanitize high-touch points like counters, doorknobs and cart handles.

Restaurants and taverns can reopen at 50 percent of fire code occupancy, provided tables are spaced six feet apart and no one party exceeds five diners. Outdoor dining is allowed. Bar seating, buffets and salad bars remain prohibited.

Phase II also allows barbers, manicurists, nail salons and other similar professionals to go back to work. They also will be required to maintain six-foot separation when possible, and to wear gloves, masks and other protection when working closely with a customer.

Other services that can resume, with restrictions, include gyms and fitness centers, manufacturing, outdoor recreation and some sports, (including golf), pet grooming, professional services like accounting, financial advice and tax preparation.

Wilson, the luthier, said he and his wife, May, dipped into their savings to keep their music shop and academy at 3110 Harborview Drive partly open, but it’s been hard.

“During phase 1, we were doing a little bit of curbside string sales. I was getting caught up on the repairs back in the shop. The academy and main part of retail were shut down,”

“If something didn’t happen by the end of June we would seriously have to reconsider what we were doing here,” he said. “It’s no sense coming into a building when you can’t do anything with it.”

Now that some restrictions have been lifted, Wilson hopes to get students back in his academy and shoppers back in the store.

Long-awaited

Gig Harbor has been waiting for this for three long months.

Particularly galling to local merchants was the re-opening last week of adjacent counties like Kitsap and Mason. Until Friday, you could get a haircut in Port Orchard, or a sit-down restaurant meal in Shelton, but not in Gig Harbor.

In a phone conversation with Gov. Jay Inslee last week, Mayor Kit Kuhn tried unsuccessfully to make the case for a carve-out for Gig Harbor, noting that Gig Harbor and the Key Peninsula together have had only 53 confirmed COVID-19 cases and just two deaths.

At the time, there had been only two new cases in the past 35 days and no new cases in 11 days, the mayor noted.

“With the number of Gig Harbor cases so low, we meet the metrics his office has to move forward,” Kuhn said in his video update last Friday. “To survive economically, Gig Harbor needs to be considered separately from Pierce County and be allowed to move forward independently from the county.”

Inslee’s response, according to the mayor, was that he was reluctant to allow cities to separate from their counties, because that would make the reopening too complicated to manage.

This issue could become moot, however, as soon as this week, since Pierce County moved Monday to apply for Phase Two status. That will allow many businesses, including restaurants, to re-open with some restrictions.

According to the mayor, that cannot come too soon.

“Our citizens and businesses are truly suffering, and many may not make it with continued closure and restrictions,” Kukhn said. “ In many ways, the broken families, loss of businesses, and health consequences as a result of stress can have a more devastating impact than the virus itself.”

Relief for small shops

The city took one step toward relief for businesses last Tuesday, when the city council approved a plan to distribute $308,000 in federal grant money among the city’s smallest businesses. The plan would allow grants of up to $1,500 to businesses with fewer than 10 employees. (See story Page A-3)

The county Board of Health gave its approval to apply for Phase Two status on Sunday. The Pierce County Council endorsed the application in its Monday morning meeting, and County Executive Bruce Dammeier submitted the application to the Secretary of Health.

The Board of Health noted that Pierce County meets seven of the 10 state’s targets, including having fewer than 25 cases per 100,000 over 14 days. Pierce County has had 18 new cases in the last two weeks.

The county also meets other targets, the board said, including having a flat hospitalization rate and having fewer than 10 percent of hospital beds occupied by COVID-19 patients.

SAFE Harbor

In preparation, Gig Harbor’s Downtown Waterfront Alliance is beginning a program that executive director Mary DesMarais said is “designed to help ensure all that downtown Gig Harbor will be a safe place to do business.

The program, called SAFE Harbor, will provide posters and other information for business and their customers. The name is an acronym for “sustainable actions that favor everyone.”

“The SAFE Harbor campaign will provide posters and necessary signage businesses can use to aid in this communication, encouraging appropriate social distancing, the use of face masks and hand sanitizer,” said DesMarais. “Additionally, SAFE Harbor will provide businesses with sanitizers and other materials to ensure a healthy environment at the business.”

“We will be inviting people to join the merchants in wearing masks,” she said.

In addition, the city will be marking off special “pickup only” parking spaces downtown, Mayor Kuhn said Friday.

“The idea is to let people run into a business for maybe 15 minutes, and get right out again,” the mayor said.

Governor Inslee has warned that any backsliding during Phase Two could result in a spike in coronavirus cases, and that could lead the county to be “demoted” back to Phase One, with its more rigorous restrictions.

Health Director Anthony Chen said if the county is approved for Phase 2, residents need to continue to practice public health measures, because the virus’ spread can change quickly.

“Everyone, you, me, everyone in Pierce County needs to continue to practice all the hygiene habits that we have acquired over the past few months,” he said to the board. “We have to maintain physical distance. We have to use face coverings when we’re in public.”

Contributing Writer Jake Gregg contributed to this story.

This story was originally published June 5, 2020 at 12:52 PM.