On a sunny October Tuesday in downtown Nashville, the sidewalks are crowded with visitors.
On Franklin Street, Laurie Tatham is behind the counter in the Acorn Cottage ringing up a customer who decided to buy two wind chimes she had hanging in the store.
Tatham owns Franklin Square, where Acorn Cottage is, with her son and daughter. “I’m always busy,” she says.
Despite the pandemic, sales at her home décor shop are up compared to last year. She believes that’s partly because people spent months self-isolating inside their homes and decided to redecorate.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]Also, “I think because there’s no music venues, there’s no sporting venues and the trouble in larger cities, people are looking for a destination to go to as an alternative,” she said.
“It’s been better than expected. I think a lot of people were kind of concerned that people were not going to come out because of the social distancing.”
In the middle of March, most Hoosiers were told to work from home, avoid large crowds and only leave their homes for essential errands. All shops in Nashville had to shut their doors and restaurants had to adapt to carry-out and delivery only.
At that time, the Wild Olive, which sells olive oils, balsamic vinegar and other cooking items, switched to online orders or no-contact, curbside pickup, owner Michelle Damrell said.
“I was nervous, but I also do a lot of web traffic, so a shift to online ordering and curbside pickup for people that are local or want to drive here was kind of smooth,” she said.
“Of course it was scary, but also knowing that eventually at some point this would pass and we’d get back to normal.”
By the middle of May, Gov. Eric Holcomb began to ease restrictions, allowing shops to reopen and restaurants to serve dine-in patrons.
The Wild Olive, on West Main Street, had a soft re-opening on Mother’s Day weekend.
“It was scary, but we did it. We’ve stayed open since then,” Damrell said.
Because other states had more restrictive mandates in place, shopkeepers said they met many new visitors to Brown County.
Damrell said it seems people were anxious to get away, but did not want to travel far.
“I’ve had a lot of customers who say, ‘I haven’t been down here in years, but we don’t want to go to our normal places far away, so we’re just doing this as a day trip,’” she said.
“It’s brought in a lot of new business. People that either haven’t been here in sometimes decades … to people who just have never been here because they always, say on their fall break, go somewhere else.”
By late September, business at the Wild Olive was picking up even more.
“One of my good friends owns a couple of shops here in town and he said, ‘It’s been hard to keep up with,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ It’s just weird,” Damrell said.
“The whole year is weird, but fantastic. I wasn’t sure what to expect.”
Escaping to the hills
In Antique Alley is McDurbin Gold and Gifts, a jewelry and gift store. Manager Marcy Rader said that once the shop was able to reopen, business was slow through the spring and summer.
“This weekend (Oct. 10 and 11) it picked up really well, which is good for everybody. I would say it’s gradually picking up with the help of October and the weather,” she said.
She has also noticed new visitors.
“There’s been a few that’s new and I think it’s just because there’s other things that are not open, like the Covered Bridge Festival and things like that, so they decided to come to Brown County instead. I think that helps,” she said.
Jake Patrick co-owns JB Goods with his brother, Josh. He, too, has met “tons of new faces, tons of first-timers.”
“Our (COVID-19 case) numbers are on the rise in the state now, but they had been pretty plateaued for a while, so they looked at us as kind of a safe state. People want to be able to get home if they need to. They don’t want to spend eight hours in a car and be somewhere where it will take them a day to get home.”
On the sunny October Tuesday, Patrick is running their shop on North Van Buren Street. They another shop on Franklin Street.
Both stores shut down around St. Patrick’s Day when the virus first began to hit Indiana. Since then, Patrick agrees that business has been better than expected.
Both shops reopened in May on an abbreviated schedule. They’re open seven days a week now from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. “Typically during October we would be open a little bit later, but we’re trying to limit our exposure to COVID,” Patrick said.
The brothers are the ones working the shops. They have one part-time employee after having to cut back to help save money.
As far as business goes, Patrick said this October is similar to sales made last October. The increase this year was in September and summer sales.
“September was out of control comparatively to year to year. So was the whole summer for that matter,” Patrick said.
“In June, things really took off. We definitely saw a lot of influx from different states that were still under more of a lockdown. They were looking at us because we were more open. They could come, they could stay in a hotel, they could go out to a restaurant.”
Patrick said he had visitors from Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri and Kentucky.
The brothers also recently bought the building that houses their shop on Van Buren Street. It is a smaller space like most shops in Nashville, so social distancing is difficult and that makes wearing masks more important for both shoppers and shopkeepers.
“We are requiring masks in store, and 99 percent of people are very agreeable to it. It’s the 1 percent that are loud,” Patrick said.
Susan Niehans agrees. She owns Head Over Heels with her husband John on Van Buren Street near the Heritage Mall.
“Some are good, but the ones who want to not do it they’re adamant. They’re rude. It’s not been pretty.
“We, on occasion, will ask people to leave the store if they’re not going to put a mask on. Then, people have gotten confrontational and I don’t want to get into it with them, so generally I’m ignoring them until they walk out the door and go away.”
Damrell said her customers at the Wild Olive have all been willing to wear masks.
“They are friendly. We haven’t had any issues,” she said.
Niehans has worked at Head Over Heels for 25 years. She and her husband bought the shop a few years ago.
She, too, said business has been better than expected this year.
“It’s nervewracking because you want to keep going with it, but at the same time you’re afraid everything is going to come to a screeching halt, too. We’re all aware of that, I think.”
“It has been going really good. I would say it is better than other Octobers,” she said of sales so far this month.
“It seems like the number of people is up as well.”
The story is the same at downtown restaurants, some of which have had waiting lines out the door.
After the governor’s stay-at-home order was issued, Brozinni Pizzeria owner Ryan Seward started offering delivery throughout the county, along with carry-out, as a way to battle low sales.
This month, Seward said that sales are up over last year and that his restaurant has been “real busy.”
Offering delivery during the pandemic was a help to his business, but the pizzeria no longer offers it because they do not have enough help.
“We barely have enough staff. Staff is the real issue now. Nobody is looking for a job it seems like,” he said.
“It’s kind of stressful, honestly,” he said.
He is thankful for the steady business, though.
“It was a little worrisome at the beginning part of the year and you didn’t know what to expect,” he said.
“I didn’t expect it to go the other way and be a lot busier than the previous years.”
‘Resilience of Brown County’
Toward the end of East Main Street, Bruce Gould waves cars in to park for $5 each.
This is the third year Gould has operated the parking lot. He’s up 25 percent so far over last year despite town being closed for two months.
He sometimes gets the opportunity to ask people where they are from and what brings them here.
“I have had a lot of first-time people. They are really curious as to what’s going on here that it’s so busy. Even on Saturday, people pull in (and say), ‘Is there some event or something going on?’ I say, ‘It’s just the way it is every Saturday. When the leaves are turning it really picks up.’”
He also has noticed younger people visiting Brown County. He also owns the Cornerstone Inn.
“We see that at the inn, where a lot of our older people they are not getting out and we have a lot of younger people,” he said.
The inn is full every weekend, but large groups cancelling their visits to Brown County through the beginning of next year has hurt room sales during the week, Gould said.
“That’s what carries the ball during the week here in Nashville are groups. That’s what pays the bills. Even though everyone is excited about the weekend, it’s still, until we get the groups back, we’re not doing terribly well. We’re OK,” he said.
At the Sept. 10, Brown County Convention and Visitors Commission meeting, President Kevin Ault reported that $372,954.58 had been collected in innkeepers tax as of July. That’s the 5-percent tax visitors pay on overnight lodging.
By last July, the county had collected $447,129.03, meaning collections were only down around $74,000 for this year with the pandemic.
CVC member Barry Herring, who owns the Brown County Inn, told the board he was “running dead even” in September compared to last year. Ault owns the Seasons Lodge and Conference Center and Hotel Nashville, and he said he also was running about the same compared to last year.
“It shows the resilience of Brown County,” CVC member Jim Schultz said of innkeepers tax collected so far.
“To me, I’m extremely happy in way we’re headed and hope we can continue that way,” Ault said at the September CVC meeting.
Gould said that cabin rentals have helped to boost the innkeepers tax, since visitors were booking them as a way to safely escape more populated areas, perhaps more often than hotel rooms.
Gould also owns a cabin in town that has been booked for six weeks straight.
“They (visitors) want to go somewhere, but they don’t want to be around other people, have some privacy and safety,” he said.
“I think we’re all really surprised at how busy we are.”
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Work is still being down to try to increase the county’s innkeepers tax.
That’s what funds the Brown County Convention and Visitors Bureau — which had to lay off two people this summer due to tax collection dips and budget cuts — and is a backup source of revenue for the Brown County Music Center. The music center has been shuttered since March and still has to make mortgage payments of around $35,000 a month.
A discussion about increasing the county’s innkeepers tax began at the June meeting of the Brown County Convention and Visitors Commission. At that time, board members voted to engage in conversations with Rep. Chris May (R-Bedford) about sponsoring legislation in the General Assembly to increase innkeepers tax to as much as 10 percent in Brown County, which is the limit set by state statute. Currently, the rate charged is 5 percent.
A change to the county’s innkeepers tax cap would have to be approved at the state level, then the Brown County Council would work with the CVC to approve an ordinance setting the new percentage collected at the local level and what to do with that additional money.
Currently, the State Bank of Lizton is requiring that 50 percent of the innkeepers tax be held back to ensure that the interest-only payments for the music center can be made.
“If we do what we did last year (collection-wise) with a 2 percent increase (in the tax rate), that would cover the music center and the CVB budget,” CVC member Barry Herring said in September.
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