AMHERST, Massachusetts. For more than a century, the office supplies store AJ Hastings has opened its doors to the public every day without fail, a staple of community in a quintessential university town.
That streak lasted during the 1918 flu and world wars, national holidays, and even a movement. “Despite everything,” said Sharon Povinelli, co-owner of the store with his wife, Mary Broll.
Located in the heart of Amherst, the store has been a mainstay for students at Amherst College and Hampshire College, and the main campus of the University of Massachusetts.
“We have been here almost as long as the universities here,” said Povinelli.
The third-generation business never broke its initial streak until the coronavirus pandemic arrived. AJ Hastings, along with millions of other companies across the country, closed in March to curb the spread of COVID-19, while universities closed their campuses and engaged in remote learning.
Since closing its doors to customers, the store has transitioned to curbside pickup and Internet sales, while the physical location undergoes renovations to meet social distancing guidelines.
The financial strain of COVID-19 has been especially severe for university cities like Amherst, where the loss of students has meant the loss of money they have invested in local economies. Undergraduate students, about 25,000 in the three schools combined, made up nearly three-quarters of Amherst’s total population. That population largely left Amherst when the campuses closed.
“What we are seeing now is a kind of ghost town,” said Gabrielle Gould, executive director of the Amherst Business Improvement District. “It was like a light switch turned off.”
Along with COVID-19, the university cities suffered great losses in income, employment and population.
“When a university sneezes, the people contract pneumonia. Now when college has pneumonia, what does that mean for the city? Stephen Gavazzi, professor of human sciences at Ohio State University, said. “The university cities have shops, bars, restaurants, hotels and apartments totally dependent on the students.”
Now, as campuses are revealing plans to reopen to maintain only a fraction of their normal capacity this fall, university cities face an existential threat.
As of July 10, 58 percent of universities will offer in-person instruction, 9 percent are teaching strictly online, and 27 percent are proposing a hybrid model for the fall, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, that tracks college reopening plans. Experts say that most teaching will be remote as classrooms will reduce occupancy to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The economies of the university cities follow the ebb and flow of the students. When students return for the fall semester, they rent apartments, buy books and school supplies, eat in restaurants, and, if they are of legal age, drink in bars. Sports events and social gatherings draw huge crowds and increase income for the local economy.
While university cities plan for periods of decline during winter and summer when many students are off campus, those slowdowns have always been seen as an exception: No one could have predicted a spring semester that ended prematurely or a fall without students.
Many universities lost what they initially had since graduation, alumni and sporting events, Gavazzi said. “Now, it is very optimistic that universities offer in-person instruction for a long time. I think students will have trouble following health protocols and we will have to go back to online learning, ”he said.
“Without a doubt, university cities are going to hurt independently.”
In Ithaca, located in the Finger Lakes region of New York, almost everyone has some connection to the city’s campuses, Cornell University, and Ithaca College. Mayor Svante Myrick said he was prepared to cut $ 14 million from the city’s $ 70 million budget and has already laid off a quarter of employees. Last month, the city passed a resolution asking the state to allow Myrick to cancel the rent for three months.
University of Michigan students contribute nearly $ 95 million a year in discretionary spending to the local economy in Ann Arbor, according to the university.
Ari Weinzweig, co-founder of Zingerman’s, an iconic delicatessen company that has multiple operations across Ann Arbor, said it has suspended nearly a third of its staff from 700 to 450, estimating sales were 50 percent of levels. prior to the pandemic.
“There are many companies that are much worse,” Weinzweig said.
The Logan restaurant, an Ann Arbor location, closed after 16 years. Aut Bar, an LGBTQ mainstay, is closing after 25 years. And after 60 years of operation, Treasure Mart, a popular antique store, is permanently closing its doors.
“It is only going to get worse because no one, not even the school, knows how many students will return to school,” Weinzweig said.
In Amherst, where the University of Massachusetts main campus offers almost all remote classes, Gould said he expects 30% of companies to close next year. AJ Hastings saw an 80 percent decrease in sales between the months of March and June, compared to the same period last year. Amherst Books, a locally owned independent bookstore, makes nearly 60 percent of its annual sales in September, a figure it doesn’t expect to be approaching this fall.
Because there is no way to get an accurate count of returning students, it is unclear how colleges and university cities will make up for their losses this fall. But for schools, cities, and businesses, one thing is clear: None of them expect to make a full recovery any time soon.
The census is another cause for concern. Each decade, the national template determines the number of seats each state sends to the United States House of Representatives and the amount of federal funds that are distributed among local and state governments. College towns reported a significant count because students leaving campus early coincided at the same time as the response window for this year’s census in the U.S.
In Athens, Ohio, Ohio University students make up three-quarters of the population. A census without this population could reduce the official workforce from 24,000 to 6,000 people. For Ithaca, a remote university town, half the population is made up of students, which means that the population count minus students could drop from 31,000 to just 15,500.
“If we don’t get a good number of students, we could lose $ 40 million over the course of 10 years,” said Athens Mayor Steve Patterson. “Those grants fund community development, services for families and seniors, and school systems.”
To mitigate the economic damage caused by the pandemic and remote learning, Patterson said Athens is creating new mountain trails in the Wayne National Forest to diversify the local economy and increase independent tourism from Ohio University.
“We really have to think creatively and differently in these communities where college is our only primary source of income,” he said. Patterson said he understood that the increase in coronavirus cases across the country was a growing concern, but any attempt to boost the local economy was a “positive side.”
Gould expressed similar sentiments, saying that ultimately, since a COVID-19 vaccine is too far away to be seen, small businesses and university cities need more help from the federal government. In April, some companies were able to get a loan from the Paycheck Protection Program, an emergency fund for small businesses with fewer than 500 employees, but for many, that money has already run out.
In early May, Gould created a micro-grant nonprofit, the Downtown Amherst Foundation, to help cover the financial losses that small businesses had suffered from the pandemic. Since its inception, the nonprofit has raised more than $ 300,000 to distribute to more than 60 small businesses, including expenses for PPE and cookout infrastructure.
“We are resilient and we are doing the best we can to help each other as a community in these circumstances,” said Gould. “It’s like plugging holes with gum on a sinking ship.”
“Fortunately, no company has closed permanently, but with far fewer returning students, I don’t know how much longer we can survive,” he said.
