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Some Open, Some Close: Businesses Gamble On Fay

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By SHANNON BEHNKEN and MICHAEL SASSO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 20, 2008

TAMPA - It would take more than a tropical storm to make Eddie & Sam's NY Pizza shut its doors, even if just for a day, owner Frank Cilek boasted.

"People need to eat; our customers need to eat," said Cilek, whose restaurant was one of a relatively few open Tuesday in downtown Tampa. Eddie & Sam's was packed Tuesday, maybe because of a lack of lunch competition.

Business owners were in a tough spot Monday as Tropical Storm Fay approached, worried about shutting down and losing a day's revenue, but concerned about making employees drive to work.

By 3 p.m. Monday, it was still unclear how bad Fay would be, or whether it would hit the Bay area at all.
Satellite images on television showed the storm making landfall somewhere in South Florida and then possibly heading for Tampa. Area school districts already had called off class for Tuesday and local governments were closing, too.

What's a business owner to do?

Some decided to close, but many kept doors open or had employees work remotely.

At noon Tuesday, the manager at Valencia Garden restaurant in Tampa was counting the number of cars driving into the parking lot and wondering whether he made the right decision to stay closed. On a normal day, manager David Agliano said he would have 100 people eating in the restaurant by noon, but on Tuesday just six cars pulled into the lot.

On a slow day like Tuesday, it may be better to stay closed. Valencia Garden's lunchtime payroll is about $800, and it's questionable that the restaurant would have covered that in sales, Agliano said.

"When the schools closed, I figured a lot of businesses would cancel too," Agliano said.

Colleen Chappell, president and CEO of Roberts Communications in Ybor City, decided to make a safe decision about Tuesday's workday: to test out the company's Business Continuity Plan.

That meant the company's 24 employees would work from home, regardless of how bad the weather got. To prepare, workers secured the building, backed up computer files and put important paperwork in waterproof boxes.

"We want to protect our personal and physical assets," Chappell said. "We determined this was a good time to test the plan we've worked on."

Chappell's company wasn't the only one having employees working from home.

Verizon Wireless decided to keep its Tampa call center open, spokesman Chuck Hamby said. Verizon stores also were open.

"We're very experienced in this, unfortunately, since we live in Florida," he said. "We meet throughout the day when a storm may come, to get updates. The decision was made at 8:30 p.m. Monday. Then we met again in the morning.

"First and foremost, we consider employee safety. If it appears we need to close, we make preparations to route calls to other centers."

Having a plan and then following it is exactly how companies should respond, said Wendy Rose, spokeswoman for The Institute for Business and Home Safety in Tampa.

"We strongly feel that business should listen to county officials if there's any type of threat," she said. "That being said, some people can work from home or from another location.

"You don't know how bad a storm will be until it's here. You don't want to leave something this important to chance."

If employees stayed away from work, they didn't rush to local attractions, a tendency during inclement weather.

The Florida Aquarium, the Salvador Dali Museum and the Museum of Science & Industry had fairly typical attendance Tuesday, even though big draws such as Busch Gardens and Lowry Park Zoo had closed for the day.

Generally, MOSI attendance typically increases from 15 percent to 20 percent on rainy days, spokeswoman Shani Jefferson said, but attendance was tracking slightly higher than a normal school day. Aquarium attendance can double or triple during rainy days, but the flow of visitors was a trickle early in the day.

"Maybe people are waiting to see what will happen, if it gets nasty or not," aquarium spokesman Tom Wagner said.

Some businesses made no firm decisions Monday, but adapted as the storm progressed slowly away from the Bay area.

Nancy Bushkin, spokeswoman for HSN, in St. Petersburg, said the company told employees Monday to work from home on Tuesday and that the office would be closed, except for essential employees.

By 10 a.m., however, company officials were calling employees to tell them they could come back to work. Some, she said, decided to continue working from home.

Reporter Ted Jackovics contributed to this report. Reporter Shannon Behnken can be reached at sbehnken@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7804. Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at msasso

@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7865.

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