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Business & Tech

Spring Can't Come Soon Enough for Doylestown Merchants

With seemingly endless storms and power outages this winter, it has to get better.

It has been a looonnng winter for Doylestown businesses.

Mother Nature has treated them harshly, throwing a wintry mix of snow, ice and wind to upset their schedules.

The innumerable seasonable storms that have hit our area have closed doors early for downtown merchants or kept them from opening altogether.

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On Saturday, high winds toppled a large tree on West Ashland Avenue near the train station, for those living and working in Doylestown.

It came on the heels of another outage, much longer, felt throughout the borough when an ice storm passed through.

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Some businesses didn’t seem too hard-pressed by the lack of power on Saturday, but for others, like on East State Street, it was definitely a bad day.

“It clearly affected my breakfast business,” said Fred Carfagno, owner of The Hoagie Works, 44 E. State St. “Saturday was one of the worst I’ve ever had.”

His power came back on as lunch hour approached.

Carfagno, who has owned the sandwich place since 1994, said a lot of his breakfast clientele are businesses located right around the downtown area, especially hair salons that are busy with weekend appointments.

But no electricity meant no one else was open as well. And that meant no sales.

Nearby at, store owner Jeff Dershin said they weren’t too inconvenienced by the lack of power. The store opens at 10:30 a.m. Saturdays, and while he sent home an idle worker, power was restored about 15 minutes after the store was scheduled to open.

But down the street at the Michener, the outage put a crimp in the museum's schedule.

Saturday was the highly anticipated opening of the museum's new Elvis and Ali photo exhibit. Though the museum let people into the lobby, the guests couldn't go into the darkened exhibits for security reasons.

An Elvis impersonator entertained guests in the lobby area while the museum waited for the power to come back on, said Kathleen McSherry, marketing director at the Michener.

"He saved the day; he was just wonderful," McSherry said. "He sang, had his picture taken with people and handed out discount coupons to come back later to the museum."

Downtown merchants, particularly along East State Street, were unlucky again when it came to power at the end of January. A transformer near County Theater while PECO worked to fix the problem and get power restored.

While A Special Gift had electricity, they still lost business since their block of East State Street was closed and a small fleet of PECO trucks were parked in parking spaces normally used by shoppers.

The jewelry and gift store still placed baskets of store sale items outside their door, signaling they were open, but to no avail. 

“We were open, but because of all the activity around us, the customers thought we were closed,” said clerk Joan Fast. “It definitely did deter people.”

Instead of lamenting over lost business, Fast said they used the unexpected down time to “freshen up for spring,” by erecting a new store sign and putting a new Parisian garden-themed display in the store window.

Around the corner at , 19 N. Main St., owner Matt Caffrey said Saturday’s power outage just added one more glitch to the severity of the season.

“It seems like it been an ongoing event,” he said. “You can’t open a kitchen in the dark. It just sets you back.”

Luckily, it didn’t happen Sunday, when the popular eatery is open earlier for brunch.

Caffrey said the restaurant delayed their opening by about half an hour, opening around 11:30 a.m.

Still, he remains optimistic about business.

“Knock on wood, we have been busy, but it certainly affects your days.”

In fact, Sunday, Chambers held its annual Wing Bowl event, which had been postponed due to the January power outage.

Following three elimination rounds, Chris Benner topped 12 other contestants by wolfing down 92 wings in 18 minutes. The Budweiser-sponsored event netted him a $500 prize.

Normal Saturday business hours for , 23 W. State St., are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. They, too, didn’t have power restored until about 10:45.

“Of course when that happens, you can’t run a credit card through – it’s either a check or cash,” said Lee Rutherford.

Rutherford said he felt fortunate that they weren’t without power for too long a period.

“The timing wasn’t too bad for Saturday,” he said. “They got us back on pretty fast.”

Neighbor Jessica Hohmann, owner of , 35 W. State St., opened her store about 90 minutes later than usual Saturday.

Bad weather, power outages and two winter holidays (Christmas and New Years) that were on Saturdays this year – good sales days – all worked against merchants, she said.

“This has just been a brutal winter for the downtown,” she said.

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