In the weeks leading up to Christmas, small businesses typically prepare for lively streets, with crowds of shoppers generating a significant portion of yearly sales.
But this year, an atmosphere of sorrow and anxiety replaced Providence’s usual festive bustle following the Dec. 13 mass shooting at Brown University, where a gunman killed two undergraduate students, Mukhammad Aziz Umurzoko and Ella Cook, and injured nine others.
In the days before Christmas on Thayer Street, a corridor largely frequented by students from Brown and neighboring Rhode Island School of Design, business owners described streets that remain quieter than usual after near silence in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy.
But some add that, as the community grieves, locals are also making an effort to support their neighbors, including small businesses.
Indeed, even Rhode Island’s largest labor group issued a request that its members visit Providence stores and restaurants to give those businesses a boost.
Lia Navarro, who works at the gift shop Spectrum-India on Thayer Street, described a heaviness in the air along the popular retail corridor in the days following the shooting.
“When everything first went down, it was dead down here,” Navarro said. “It was just an eerie silence.”
While the weeks leading up to Christmas are a prime shopping window for most retailers, Thayer Street businesses don’t follow quite the same pattern. With a customer base largely composed of college students, business tends to settle down around mid-December when finals take place and students return to their hometowns for winter break.
Still, those weeks before winter break provide businesses with an opportunity to make up for the annual monthlong lull until students return in late January.
This year, that quiet settled in earlier as the universities canceled in-person finals and students reeled from the tragedy. In the days immediately following the shooting, business owners also recalled an atmosphere of anxiety as the suspect remained at large. Police have since found the suspected shooter dead in New Hampshire.
“If it continued to stay empty on Thayer, we would probably be out of here in two months,” Navarro said.
But since that time, community members have made an effort to support the business during a typically quiet period, Navarro said. In the first few days after the shooting, most customers were regulars intentionally seeking to support Spectrum-India.
“I could really tell the community came together,” Navarro said. “I think that really saved us.”
Local officials and business leaders, including Rhode Island AFL-CIO President Patrick Crowley and Secretary-Treasurer Karen Hazard, have spoken out to encourage exactly this type of support. The labor federation's membership includes local unions that represent thousands of workers.
“In the aftermath of the tragedy at Brown University, we are aware of the concerns of our friends in the local Providence business and restaurant communities about how these sad events can have lasting impacts on the economic well-being of our capital city,” Crowley and Hazard said in a joint statement.
“Therefore, in solidarity with local establishments and as a demonstration of the resiliency of our community, the Rhode Island AFL-CIO is encouraging all union members to patronize local Providence businesses and restaurants, especially during the next few weeks of the holiday season,” they said. “In the labor movement, when we say, ‘An injury to one is an injury to all,’ we mean it.”
Ben Kim, manager at Kung Fu Tea near the intersection of Thayer and Waterman streets, estimates that students make up around 60% to 70% of the business’s patronage.
Like neighboring businesses, Kung Fu Tea’s sales are usually slower in the winter, with students absent and fewer people buying cold beverages such as bubble teas.
Still, "It was slower than usual since the Brown students went home,” Kim said, and in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, “people probably didn’t feel safe.”
Kung Fu Tea opened the day after the shooting but shut down for the next four days due to a lack of business. Since that time, sales have been about half the usual amount.
At bb.q Chicken + Soban Korean Eatery, acting manager Jae Cho described Thayer Street as “almost a ghost town.”
“It’s usually slow,” he said. “But not this early.”
Looking ahead, businesses aren’t entirely sure what to expect. Kim wonders if many students might not return in the spring and if worries about the larger economy could hurt business further.
“Even if [students] do come back, you can argue that now eating out is a luxury,” he said.
Navarro is confident that the community will continue to show up for small businesses despite lingering anxiety over the shooting.
“I know they’ll support us,” Navarro said.
