Businesses who depend on Orange Line worried about shutdown impact
SOMERVILLE - The lunch rush couldn't be any busier at Which Wich sandwich shop at Assembly Row in Somerville. Already district manager Amado Gonzalez is worried he won't be quite as busy at this time next week with the month-long shutdown of the Orange Line.
"I don't see it," says Gonzalez. He depends heavily on the Orange Line Assembly stop to bring in not just customers, but most of his employees to work. It's a potential double hit in the coming weeks. "I'm already having issues with employees not getting here, and we get a lot of customers who come right down from the Orange Line."
It's a similar issue at Mystic Station restaurant in Malden Center. Owner Brian Palazzolo is working 17-hour days with his workforce more than cut in half over the last two years. The Orange Line shutdown is costing him more.
"We've already lost one employee who lives in Revere. She takes the Orange Line and tried to do it without it, but wasn't able to," said Pallazolo. He's not just worried about losing employees but also customers at his downtown location near the Orange Line. "That could be a huge thing, customers who travel on the T, disrupt it for a month, and they find a new place with a change in habits and not see them anymore."
Back at Assembly Row, All She Wrote Books bookstore owner Christina Pascucci Ciampa says her business is considered a destination for queer and feminist readers with few others like it in the area. The Orange Line, she says, is what brings them in and the shutdown could keep them out.
"We get college students from downtown, Northeastern, folks that live in other parts of the city that want to come to a space like ours," she said. Pascucci Ciampa also worries the shutdown will last longer than 30 days.
At a virtual forum with the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak tried to offer reassurances.
"Our intent is to reopen in 30 days. We've planned and added contingencies so we can do that," he said.
