For 4th Avenue businesses, CARES Act provided a much-needed boost

Lizzie Mead gestured proudly at the pristine screen of her new touchless cash register.

“This is the best $1,200 I ever spent,” she said.

Like many businesses, Silver Sea Jewelry — the Fourth Avenue shop Mead has owned for the past 29 years — was forced to close its doors for several months after the COVID-19 pandemic struck in March 2020.

The ocean-themed handcrafted jewelry shop stayed afloat through online sales, but Mead worried about her employees, all of whom are part-time and many of whom had lost their other gigs during the pandemic. So, when Silver Sea Jewelry received financial relief payments, Mead used part of the money to give her employees bonuses on their paychecks.

She also replaced the clunky cash register she’d been using since the early 1990s. Her sleek new register doesn’t just make it easier to ring up customers, but it has also transformed the way she runs her shop, Mead said.

“It details every transaction for me,” she said. “It tells me what the most popular item is, or what I need to order more of. I am loving this machine.”

Finally, Mead purchased a foot-operated hand sanitizer unit, which stands just inside the door of her shop. It was a gesture at once practical and hopeful, in keeping with the cautious optimism that seems to prevail on Historic Fourth Avenue these days.

Silver Sea Jewelry is one of more than 60 businesses in and around the Fourth Avenue area that received relief payments from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act through a partnership between Pima County and the Fourth Avenue Foundation. For many small businesses, the relief funding came as just that — a relief.

“Ninety-nine percent of the businesses here are local mom and pop stores,” said Casey Anderson, chief operations officer at the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association.

Most of the businesses used the funding to meet their most immediate needs, from meeting rent and mortgage payments to keeping the electricity and internet on. Some business owners jumped at the chance to make long-needed upgrades, while others used the funding to make payroll.

“I am exceedingly grateful for the government,” said Arlene Leaf, who has owned the Tucson Thrift Store for the past 43 years. “I just bless them.”

Leaf used the funding to give the interior of her store a fresh new look, from cleaning the carpets to painting the walls and the floors.

“We wanted it to be nice inside when our customers came back,” she said. “We didn’t want it to be depressing.”

For some businesses, the relief funding provided a financial shot in the arm as they struggled to acclimate to a world where in-person shopping was largely suspended.

Jake Sullivan, co-owner of Wooden Tooth Records, said that his store had never done any online sales before closing their doors for six months after the pandemic struck.

“For a while, we had absolutely no money coming in,” he said. “Our web store became our only source of revenue.”

Along with paying rent and utilities, Sullivan said that his store used the relief payments to ensure that their employees still got their paychecks even while the store was closed.

The Book Stop, which moved to its current location on Fourth Avenue in 2007, was open by appointment-only for a time during the pandemic. The store continues to thrive, though its co-owner and main proprietor, Tina Bailey, passed away in June 2021.

The relief payments helped the bookstore — a beloved Tucson institution since 1967 — continue to pay the rent while their doors were largely closed to the public.

“I’m sure it made Tina feel relieved and encouraged,” said Claire Fellows, owner of The Book Stop.

Other business owners said that the funding helped to carry them through the worst days of the pandemic.

“We used it to pay our rent and utilities for two months,” said Tank Ojah, whose gift shop, Everest Souvenirs, has been on Fourth Avenue since 2007. “That made a big difference for us.”

The long-anticipated COVID-19 vaccine came to Fourth Avenue in April 2021, when Pima County set up its “Vax After Dark” mobile clinic in the parking lot of Antigone Books. The clinic provided walk-up appointments for first and second doses of the vaccine every Thursday evening.

For business owners, employees, and other Fourth Avenue regulars, the pop-up clinic offered a quick and easy way to get vaccinated.

“We were all fortunate enough to have received our shots before the mobile clinic opened, but we certainly referred a lot of folks that way,” Sullivan said.

Mead said that she thought all of her employees had used the mobile clinic to get their vaccines.

Despite the ongoing presence of COVID-19 in the community, business owners expressed relief that the worst part of the crisis seemed to be over.

“I feel proud of the fact that we came through it OK,” Leaf said.

“We’re still catching up,” Mead said. “But I’d like to do this forever if I can.”