Up to $10,000 in grant funding is available for shops to help with rent, mortgage, and utility costs, but owners call it a band-aid, not a fix.
Getting down the 700 and 800 blocks of Granby Street on foot is its own kind of obstacle course these days. The construction cuts deep into the roadway, narrowing traffic to a single flow on one side while crews dig into hundred-year-old water systems and pipes on the other. What was once a stretch of Norfolk built on foot traffic now sees almost none.
Inside Stark and Legum, a men’s clothing store, the register sits quietly. The owners stand behind it, passing the time in conversation, waiting for customers who aren’t coming in. Next door, Sonia Newell is locking up early, headed to a vendor event at Nauticus instead of waiting on walk-ins. She says her juice bar isn’t the business it was before the city started tearing up the street outside her door…