Storm damage brings economic windfall to Cape Girardeau businesses

Mary Voelker of Sikeston, Mo., never envisioned spending her Monday afternoon at a Cape Girardeau laundry facility.

But last week's winter storm knocked out power at her home, forcing her to make the 35-mile trek to wash laundry and complete her college assignments from Southeast Missouri State University's Sikeston center at the Cape Girardeau campus.

"This has caused a lack of daily routine," Voelker said while waiting for two loads to dry at SEMO Laundry, 123 N. Pacific St. "I've done a lot of eating out because my refrigerator and microwave inside my home don't have power. My diet has gone from Weight Watchers to China Buffet."

Since Friday SEMO Laundry has been inundated by storm-affected customers coming from as far away as Portageville, Mo., and parts of Southern Illinois. The storm left as many as 108,000 customers in the dark at one time in Southeast Missouri alone, but the lack of power also was an economic boon to the Cape Girardeau area.

Hotels and hardware stores in Cape Girardeau and Jackson saw a surge in business as early as Jan. 26. Most hotels were fully booked and retailers reported long lines of people waiting to purchase such supplies as generators, chain saws and kerosene.

KIT DOYLE ~ kdoyle@semissourian.comCraig Kubitza and Elly Schmidt talk while waiting on clothes Saturday at Show-Me Laundry in Cape Girardeau. The Sikeston, Mo., couple has been without power since Tuesday, and they have made multiple trips to Cape Girardeau for essentials. Attendant Elaine Bird said the laundry facility has been much busier than normal with out-of-town customers, who were the majority of patrons Saturday morning.

"We definitely saw an increase, though it's not like last February's ice storm," Townhouse Inn manager Anna Leroux said. "Normally we're full except for a couple of days during the week.

"But the storm has us completely booked since early last week. People are still calling for rooms, and we don't expect it to let up anytime soon."

Leroux said guests from as far away as Blytheville, Ark., and Carbondale, Ill., stayed at one of the two Townhouse Inn locations in Cape Girardeau and Jackson. Most have been people without electricity, though a few have been utility workers.

The situation was the same at Holiday Inn Express Hotel and Suites in Cape Girardeau, where most guests escaping the storm were from the Sikeston area.

"They were very happy to be in a hotel with electricity and couldn't wait to take a shower and warm up," general manager Karla Clifton said.

While he did not have an exact dollar amount generated from the business, John Echimovich, director of operations of the hotel division at MidAmerica Hotels Corp. in Cape Girardeau, which owns Holiday Inn Express and Victoria Inn, said the storm and electricity outage added guests to an already busy week at both hotels.

"Although harsh winter storms create many challenges, it also offers an opportunity for our staff to go above and beyond for our guests," Echimovich said. "In the first 24 hours after the storm, our maintenance team was able to dig out 46 cars so that our guests could get back in business."

All Drury Hotels in Cape Girardeau, Jackson, Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, Mo., Hayti, Mo., and Memphis, Tenn., have been completely booked since Jan. 26, according to Sara Heuer, regional manager for 12 Drury Hotels in those cities. While the hotels in Cape Girardeau and Jackson never lost power, those in Sikeston, Poplar Bluff and Hayti were forced to operate off generators until power was restored. Utility workers made up the bulk of guests at Hayti while mostly families stayed at the other locations. Heuer said as families have left, more utility workers have come in.

"Anytime the power goes out you see extra demand and an increase in business," Heuer said. "We're just happy we could provide a friendly staff and warm place for the families and utility workers."

Lisa Little, manager of Sappington Pro Outdoor in Jackson, said the business has sold about 75 8,000- to 10,000-watt generators. During the February 2008 ice storm the store sold between 10 and 15 generators. Trucks from Chicago and Kansas City shipped generators throughout the week when the store's supply ran low.

"This has given us a little bit of a boon with the way the economy has been," Little said. "In the long run it may hurt us because people will now be concentrating on their cleanup more than buying from us."

Little said the store also had trouble keeping a supply of gas jugs in stock and expected an additional shipment of 20 to arrive Monday afternoon.

"The rush has kind of died off but we still have people calling for generators and other supplies," Little said.

Mark Beaudean of Southeast Missouri Builders Supply in Cape Girardeau said his business quickly sold out of his two-and-a-half-gallon and five-gallon containers of fuel by Jan. 29. Half of his stock of 100 one-gallon containers remain. The business reported only one generator remaining for sale.

"About as quickly as we got stuff in, it seemed like customers bought them pretty quickly," Beaudean said. "But we have plenty of ice melt and snow shovels, though the shovels don't do much good in weather like this."

Other businesses with kerosene in stock include Buchheit of Jackson and Bill Peters Hardware in Marble Hill, Mo.

Bill Peters, owner of Bill Peters Hardware, said one Kentucky resident plans to travel to his store to buy a $20 wick used to start a kerosene heater.

"He has the heater but is having trouble locating a wick that will make his only source of heating work," Peters said. "The situation today is that roofs are still falling in and people are calling me so they can have heat to put into their homes to melt the ice off.

"We got in a new shipment of generators and have a good supply of chain saws," he said. "We should have a near endless supply of chain saws because we're near Crader Distributing, which is a distributor of Stihl."

Cape Girardeau Area Chamber of Commerce executive director John Mehner said that while the storm brought an abnormal amount of additional money into area businesses, he wishes the money had been generated from sources other than a natural disaster.

"This was a direct outcome of a bad situation," Mehner said. "Living off people's tragedies is not a good thing. The hotels and hardware stores are appreciative of the business but not the situation."

From his perspective, last week's storm was the worst since the 24 inches of snowfall some areas received in 1979.

"When the meteorologists predicted this would be the worst winter storm in two decades, they nailed it," Mehner said. "And while we didn't get it as bad as some places in the Bootheel and western Kentucky, some businesses in this area were forced to close down for a few days. What people don't understand is that those businesses may have been fine to open but their workers weren't able to report for work."

bblackwell@semissourian.com

388-3628

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