Survey reveals half of St. Albert businesses need financial support

Almost all of St. Albert's businesses have felt a negative impact from the COVID-19 pandemic and nearly half say they need financial support, according to a business survey the city and the St. Albert and District Chamber of Commerce released last week.

The survey was made available to businesses in St. Albert on March 23 through websites, social media and online newsletters, and asked for feedback on the initial impact of the pandemic and anticipated future impact on their businesses.

Approximately 400 businesses, or 10 per cent of the 3,600 licenced businesses in the city, responded to the survey.

Sales have dropped by 75 per cent since the pandemic began, said Jenny Pyshniak, owner of Seasons Gift Shop on McKenney Avenue. The gift shop has laid off all four of its part-time employees. 

"This is our second-busiest time of the year, so it's impacted us dramatically," Pyshniak told the Gazette. 

Curbside pickup was organized about a month ago, which has helped keep the store's head above water, she said.

Now, Pyshniak and her store partner Dara Lee Paul are taking on the behemoth task of building a point-of-sale website from scratch to sell the store's one-of-a-kind jewelry pieces, clothing, cards and other inventory online. 

"It's a big job, and you need a lot of time to do it," she said. "We have over 6,000 different items in our inventory, so they certainly are not all going to be up in the first day."

Rent is still a concern, but Pyshniak said she's hopeful the federal rent assistance program will provide some relief. Combined with the $40,000 federal loan, Pyshniak said she believes the business will be okay for now.

Now they're saddled with trying to figure out how to manage these impacts over the long-term. 

"We're looking further out – we're not just looking about a reopening day. It's going to be about what happens after that," she said. 

The survey's results paint a grim picture. Some key findings from March 23 to April 9 include: 

• 87 per cent of businesses reported negative impacts from the COVID-19 outbreak  
• 75 per cent of businesses have not launched new programs or services 
• 40 per cent are offering curbside pickup or delivery 
• 29 per cent reported between 76 to 100 per cent of lost revenue in comparison to March last year 
• 50 per cent noted their most important need as financial support to help with ongoing expenses, deferred payment plan or available loans and access to cash

"Right out of the gate, there was a really clear understanding that our community needed support. Eighty-seven per cent of businesses who took the survey indicated they were being negatively impacted, and we really empathize with that," said Sean McRitchie, economic development director for the city. 

McRitchie said the city has deferred property taxes and utility payments as a way of providing immediate relief to those businesses. In addition, McRitchie said the city is "advocating heavily" to various levels of government for support around commercial rent assistance and the Canadian wage subsidy. 

This first survey was simply a snapshot in time to give both the city and the chamber a better baseline understanding of impacts, McRitchie said. 

"I think the survey, although it was some time ago when the emergency response initiative started taking place, it has stood the test of time and given us a sense of what we have to deal with going forward." 

The city will provide webinars and workshops to the business community to help them get a better understanding of where they fit in those federal and provincial programs, and how they can transition their business to an online sale platform, McRitchie said.

Ten per cent of respondents said they wanted a centralized location for information on government support information. 

"That is really where we're (basing) a lot of our municipal support services, to help address the concerns we've gotten from the survey responses and what we've heard from businesses that we've connected with on a one-on-one basis," he said.

Jennifer McCurdy, president and CEO of the Chamber, said efforts are now being focused on developing the next stage of the survey, which would explore how to overcome future challenges should the province move into a recovery phase over the next several months. 

"They're worried about when they'll be able to get back to business and what that's going to look like. When businesses are back up and running, it's not going to be business as usual – it's going to be a new way of doing things," she said.

"A majority of our businesses have five or less employees, and they don't have the luxury of a (human resources) person or even payroll. They're probably doing it themselves. We're just making sure that we're getting the right resources there for them."

Government programs coming out seem to be geared toward helping smaller and medium-sized businesses, which McRitchie said he believes have been beneficial to the local business community.

"The survey that we are likely to develop going forward will really be focused on the programs and supports that have been offered, how they were utilized, and how successful they've been in helping businesses overcome these challenges," he said.

While some businesses are going to be grateful for those programs, "we just need to make sure that they get the money sooner rather than later, because some of them are just hanging on," McCurdy said. 

A question around mental health is one McCurdy said she'd like to see on future surveys. 

"We might look at having a question around that to see if there's support that's needed from a mental health standpoint, given it's not necessarily always thought about when you're talking about businesses." 

This first survey may be limited in what data it was able to collect. Some of the survey questions did not offer a broader range in responses, and it was unclear how many businesses responded to the survey from just looking at the results. The fourth question, which took a look at employee layoffs, did not answer what percentage of businesses had seen a reduction in staff overall. The fifth question seems to be missing. 

Looking over the results, McRitchie said 75 per cent of businesses who responded indicated they are currently in a position to consider layoffs, with approximately 45 per cent of these jobs being part-time, 55 per cent full-time. 

The point of the survey was to get a snapshot of what was happening as quickly as possible, McRitchie said. Questions offering a broader range of responses in terms of the level of impact businesses are facing and the effectiveness of government programs could come with the second round of surveys. 

"I don't think anyone could have imagined that at the time we put the survey out, there were multiple scenarios of negative. We maybe knew what was coming in some regard, maybe not to the level that we've seen," McRitchie said. 

"That's going to be important for us to work together with the Chamber to really address the most current challenges of the day, but also try to be forward-looking and try to anticipate what future challenges may come up."