Shrewsbury Businesses Pay Steep Price for Irene

Behind the still-darkened Trader Joe’s in the Staples shopping center on Route 35 sit two dumpsters filled to the top with food. Prepared meals, once-fresh produce, and budget flowers used to entice shoppers as they enter the store all sit in a huge heap, all casualties of Hurricane Irene.

For Shrewsbury’s largest retail corridor it’s lights out. When Hurricane Irene reached the New Jersey Shore Saturday night, the section of borough between Sycamore and Shrewsbury Avenues was the first to lose power. And, according to some business owners, it’s likely to stay that way for some time.

Angel Santiago stood outside of his shop, Bird Jungle, Tuesday and recalled the past winter’s December snowstorm. Then, he said, the power was out in the shopping center for four days before getting turned back on. This time, he’s been told he’ll be lucky if the power comes back by Sunday.

“This section of Shrewsbury is the worst,” Santiago said. “We’re the first ones to lose power and the last ones to get it fixed.”

Though his business is located and open in what looks like, currently, a deserted shopping center, the impact on his store won’t be as great as some of his close neighbors. The biggest issue he faces is a pet store full of birds who have no idea what time of day it is and keep waiting for light to let them know it’s time to come out, stretch their wings and move around.

For restaurants, it means losing the product they’ve stored. For markets, like Trader Joe’s and the Acme located in another powerless shopping center across the street, the loss is tremendous.

“For all of these businesses around here, there’s the loss of income, the loss of inventory,” he said. “These (Trader Joe’s and Acme) are thriving businesses and they’re losing so much every day.”

While Trader Joe’s remained closed, not even opening its doors following the outage to sell non-perishable items – even its managers inappropriately demanding from inside the closed and dark store Tuesday that no photos be taken of the supermarket from outside in the parking lot – Acme did its best to show that business was as usual. As usual considering the circumstances, anyway.

The freezers were empty, the dairy section a bright wall of white shelves and brightly colored labels. Everything refrigerated or frozen has been trashed. In the produce section a few apples and peaches sat oddly isolated from each other, most everything else having been disposed of already.

“We’re at a limited capacity with what we have to sell,” Store Manager Vic Forgash said. “But, we’re open for business and we’re hoping to be stocked with perishable items by tomorrow. We wanted to remain open as a service to the community. We thought it was important.”

According to Jersey Central Power and Light, an estimated 706 customers were without power as of midnight. In nearby Red Bank more than 1,000 customers are without power, a significant reduction of the early Tuesday morning total of nearly 5,000 customers.

Unlike Shrewsbury, however, Red Bank’s retailers mostly escaped Hurricane Irene with nary a scratch. The two shopping centers affected by outages in Shrewsbury home dozens of retailers, some who attempted to open even without power, and many that chose instead to hang up hand-scrawled “closed because of Irene” signs. The nearby Eastern Branch of the Monmouth County Library also remains closed because of the power outage.

While the businesses wait for electricity to flow again, there’s still a silver lining to this whole mess, Forgash said.

            “This was a category one hurricane,” he said. “I guess we’re all fortunate that it wasn’t much worse.”