Additional reporting by Ben Fractenberg

Terence Tubridy’s frustration level just keeps rising. All summer long, he seethed as his restaurants in the Rockaways stayed shut while competitors only a few miles away in the Nassau County town of Long Beach reopened with 50% capacity for indoor dining.

Now, with coronavirus cases rising, the owner of 14 eateries in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan faces new restrictions, like having to close at 10 p.m. while operating at 25% capacity indoors as winter approaches. 

It could get worse for restauranteurs like him soon: Mayor Bill de Blasio, who just closed public school buildings, said Thursday he expects indoor dining to be suspended “in the next week or two,” though Gov. Andrew Cuomo would have the final say.

“It’s nails in the coffin,” said Tubridy, who heads the In Good Company Hospitality group.

Tubridy fears another round of closures would force him to permanently shutter some of his restaurants, meaning the elimination of several hundred jobs at his company. In the bigger picture, industry leaders fear the loss of more eateries and many of the 100,000 restaurant jobs the city has regained since March.

Among them: about 11,000 restaurant positions added in October, according to state employment figures released Thursday.

As the nation’s COVID-19 death toll sured 250,000 this week, some states are re-imposing tough restrictions. In addition to closing city schools and the bar and restaurant curfew, de Blasio and Cuomo limited indoor gatherings to 10 people with Thanksgiving and the December holidays on the way.

Meanwhile, business owners across the city are furious over what they see as high-handed and discriminatory rules being ordered by the mayor and the governor without evidence to back their actions.

“There is a strong sense from the business community that New York City, because of test and tracing, has reliable data on what is causing the infection spikes,” said Randy Peers, president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce. “If the city and state are going to make shut down decisions, businesses want to see the evidence behind the decisions.”

Layoffs and Furloughs

In New York City, new restrictions would be followed immediately by layoffs, business leaders said.

Tubridy has brought back only about 150 workers of the 850 he employed before the pandemic. He operated only one restaurant for takeout during the shutdown and would probably send the vast majority of workers home again.

“Restaurants aren’t light switches like office buildings,” Tubridy said. “We get only two days’ notice of new rules and we are sitting on tens of thousands of food inventory. A lot of us don’t have the capital to restart.”

Robert Schwartz’s two Eneslow shoe stores in Manhattan are doing only 25% of their pre-pandemic volume and his outlet in Queens about half. 

He isn’t taking a salary. In the event of another shutdown for non-essential businesses, he would have to furlough the 18 workers he called back. All of them are currently working only 18 to 20 hours a week.

‘If we have another shutdown, we will have to let go more staff.’

It’s a similar story in Pelham Bay where Geri Sciortino’s Bronx Design Group reopened and got an initial boost from producing social distancing signs for customers who previously commissioned materials for galas and other fund-raising efforts.

But now business has slowed to 50% of its pre-pandemic level. One of her 14 employees never returned to the company and her other 13 employees are all working part-time.

“If we have another shutdown, we will have to let go more staff in order to survive,” she said.

Business owners are angry over what they regard as the big-business bias in what is open and what is shut under exemptions for so-called essential businesses.

“Revenues at Targets and CVS are off the charts,” noted Thomas Grech, chief executive of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. “Why could you go into those stores (during the shutdown) but not a 99-cent store? Where is the science in that? Didn’t get it before and still don’t get it.”

Owners Slam City

Restaurant owners, in particular, say the science does not the onerous restrictions they are under — and claim early studies of spread in restaurants were done in March and April before required safety measures were instituted.

“Since indoor dining in New York City was allowed, there has been zero tracing evidence thus far of any restaurant-related spread,” argued Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York Hospitality Alliance. “And they have the name and info of someone from every table!”

Tubridy says that not a single one of his employees has tested positive since returning to his restaurants, which include the Park Avenue Tavern and Parker & Quinn in Manhattan and Bungalow in the Rockaways.

“Evidence is showing that most people are contracting COVID at home, from friends and family , so shutting down retail and other business establishments — which have gone to great pains to meet all public health protocols — is not going to stop the spread,” added Kathryn Wylde, chief executive of the Partnership for New York City.

The Mayor’s Office says restaurants can spread the disease.

“We know that indoor settings where people gather unmasked are high-risk environments and conducive to the spread of the virus,” said Avery Cohen, a spokesperson for de Blasio. “The scientific consensus is clear. To that end, New York City’s health teams have conducted investigations into COVID-19 clusters involving food-service establishments.”

Unemployment Benefits at Risk

The controversy of how to deal with the resurgence of coronavirus comes as the city’s economy continues to be harder hit than almost anywhere else in the nation.

New figures released Thursday put the October unemployment rate at 13.2% or close to double the 6.9% national rate. The five counties in New York State with the highest jobless rates are the city’s five boroughs.

The city added a very weak 12,000 jobs overall in October, suggesting few gains outside of restaurants, with retail and health positions holding steady. 

In all, the city has regained a little more than a third of the 944,000 jobs lost when the economy hit bottom in April. The nation, as a whole, has made up for half of the employment losses in the same period, federal figures show.

Tightening restrictions and a reduction in revenue could be more disastrous this time because there is no additional help like the federal PPP loans for small businesses unless a new aid bill es the lame-duck Congress. 

Meanwhile, key unemployment benefits expire at the end of December.

From March through October, New York City residents collected about $30 billion in jobless aid, according to an analysis by the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School. 

The monthly amount has already declined to $2 billion in June from $7.5 billion in March. That’s because the number of unemployed has fallen to about 2.5 million from more than 3 million and because the $600 a week and then $300 a week in supplemental benefits ran out in September.

At the end of next month, federal money to extend unemployment benefits beyond 26 weeks ends. So does a special benefit for freelancers, gig workers and other independent contractors — a number that totals about 1.5 million city residents as of last week.

“Federally funded unemployment benefits ed for 77% of all benefits paid statewide from March through September,” said James Parrott, the center’s economist. “The total amount of payments to city and state residents will start to plummet in January and deprive hundreds of thousands of households of needed income.”

Tough Decisions

While business owners are upset, the choices confronting the mayor and the governor are very difficult especially given they are balancing both short- and long-term pressures, economists say. 

Troy Tassier, who specializes in epidemiology economics at Fordham University, notes that every introductory economics class teaches that nothing is truly free and every choice has a cost.

“If we can keep the virus under control, then the restaurants will be able to open at full capacity sooner than if we have another large wave like we had last spring,” he said. “But do we lose large numbers of restaurants that won’t survive until that happens?”