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This is NSPR’s special program about the local and regional effects of COVID-19 in the North State.Originally broadcast each weeknight, as of late July 2020, the show is now weekly — airing Thursdays at 6:30 p.m. and rebroadcast at 8:30 a.m. the following day. NSPR will continue this special coverage as long as our community needs it. Our mission with this show is to provide accurate news and information about COVID-19 in our region.

Q&A: How Downtown Oroville Business Development Has Been Impacted By COVID-19

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For downtown Oroville, the COVID-19 pandemic came at a time of renaissance, says Eric Smith, CEO of the Oroville Chamber of Commerce.

While the area has faced its share of economic pain, Smith says he’s cautiously optimistic that the city will continue on its path toward a vibrant downtown business scene. 

He recently spoke with NSPR’s Ken Devol about local business owner confidence and what’s expected as the city navigates new realities.

Here are highlights from their conversation. You can also listen at the top of the page.

On downtown business owners’ investment in Oroville

When I think about change for downtown Oroville I think of the heart of the business owners and their desire to see change and their investment. There's a lot of folks that have made quite the investment. In particular one business owner, Brian Wong, and he recently bought Miner's Alley and he's doing tremendous renovations to that particular business. 

Also, this past year, a bid came along — a business improvement district — all of the businesses got on board with that. And they have made that investment. It used to be when the Downtown Business Association would meet, there was just a handful of people. Now the room is full. So these various business owners have decided that we're going to up the ante, we're going to invest in ourselves, invest in this downtown, and we're going to make it work. So I think it's that they see an opportunity, that they have a tremendous asset — of course, the downtown buildings down there, they're all historic and they're beautiful buildings. So these folks have also made the endeavors to rehabilitate them. 

I think of Bud Tracy, what he did with the Oroville Inn. He completely renovated that facility, made it available to the lineman college. It's basically a dorm in the upstairs, but the downstairs has lovely facilities for people to have banquets in. And it's just beautiful. So again, you know, we have a lot of investment and there's new people that are coming in. And so when you have that it brings a renaissance, if you will. Of course there's still a ways to go, but it definitely is going in the right direction.

On how COVID-19 has affected Oroville businesses

I think like everyone else, there's pain. No one has dodged that. But I think because we are in kind of the groundbreaking, corner-turning as a community, that — for an example — when I talk about Miner's Alley, Miner's Alley was closed because of all the renovations that are going on and that owner, his schedule for reopening that particular business with a big patio area, just a beautiful renovation, his original target date was I think, in the end of June, first part of July. And so because you have renovations and a lot of projects going on, as much of Oroville really is in a process of rebuilding and reinventing itself, so in some ways, there's no good time for something like this to happen, but because we are in this process, I think that some businesses were actually poised to weather it better than maybe some other areas. 

In fact, we had just done a business confidence survey, here the chamber did. And actually Oroville as far as the business community is concerned, when we look at the rest of the nation, there's a little bit more positivity here. But, you know, again, some of the other restaurants, for example, The Exchange, they did the curbside. Many restaurants had to resort to no dining in and you know, businesses is down, but I think that many of them are able to — and again in joining the PPP program, I know a lot of our small businesses jumped on board with that and I just talked with the Mug Shots downtown, a little coffee shop. They reported about a 50% downturn initially, but they said thanks for coming back. You know, it's painful, but it's not devastating. And I'm hopeful that things will come roaring back here in Oroville very soon.

On the potential of businesses not coming back

Of course, I'm sure that there will be some that will not survive. But again, Oroville is in this process of reinventing itself. Now we have this huge $200 million hospital being built right now as we speak. And we have the big huge, Erector Set metal skeleton up, and they did that in like a week. It's just amazing. And so there's a lot of construction, there's a lot of building going on, and a lot of the funding was already in the pipeline. Of course, you have those workers that are here, already, you know, scheduled. That keeps things going, because those dollars are in the pipeline, those projects are in the pipeline. And so for a small community of 20,000 people, which is about our population, and you have projects of that size going on, it kind of keeps things ticking along.

On the pandemic’s effect on tourism

I think the jury's still out on that. As you know, we have two casinos here locally that bring in a lot of outside business. Of course they've been closed. Both this past week have reopened with limited activities at both properties. Both of them have large, high-quality RV parks, hotels. Just anecdotally, I see that at both of them the RV parks have remained fairly full through this process. The lake as you might know, that's all closed for camping. However, recently, State Parks did reopen for day use. 

For an example, we had several fishing tournaments scheduled. Those have all been canceled. And of course fishing tournaments bring in a lot of outside people from the North State and greater area. So that's an impact that is yet to be seen. 

We've been in the process of asking the state to allow those activities once again to happen. We've lost the tournaments. And then there was another issue with, for example, guiding service on the lake. We have fishing guides that bring in a lot of outside people and they were shut down for some time. So there are certainly impacts that we have yet to see exactly how that's going to carry forward into the future. 

Additionally, the chamber, we support a lot of things like the Salmon Festival —that's in question. Feather Fiesta Days did not happen. There's a lot of events here in the spring and early summer that did not happen. 

However, we're planning on doing the Fourth of July at the Oroville airport. And we're waiting for the final approval from the FAA. The City Council of Oroville had given their approval last night. And I think that's just going to be a great opportunity for our community to have some sense of normalcy with the Fourth of July celebration. We can't congregate in any area, there's not any designated area. But out of the airport, we're going to be able to use some of the larger shells, the 10-inch shells that will launch these fireworks up a thousand feet. And so you're literally going to be able to view this display from all around the town and beyond. And so that's going to be a lot of fun. I think it'll just be a good sense of normalcy here that we can celebrate our country and what that means.

On the results of a recent business confidence survey for Oroville

Of our employers here locally, 12% are anticipating an increase in employment and 67% are saying that it's going to stay the same. 21% are anticipating a decrease in employment. And so when you kind of just take those matrix and put them together, maybe a 10% downturn in employment overall, which is about half of what I just listened to this morning, the projections of some 20% unemployment nationwide. 

And so again, we're pretty resilient here. And again, because Oroville is in the state of Renaissance reinventing itself, rebuilding itself, and again, just going back, because a lot of these projects were already poised and in the pipeline, pre-COVID, that we're just going to kind of build right on through this. Keep moving right on through and come out the other side and think bigger, better, stronger than we did before this whole thing started. That kind of what I'm thinking — it's cautiously optimistic about the future. I mean, certainly we are all tied together as Californians and what affects one part of the state, we're going to feel that. But I think as a local community, by and large, I think we're going to weather the storm.

On housing in Oroville post-Camp Fire

Housing has been an issue here in Oroville and there just wasn't any. In fact, and still when you look at the real estate market, any property that is in movable condition is still snapped up pretty quick. So we did see quite an upturn. So when it comes to the impacts of the fire and what happened in Paradise, we were heavily involved as far as helping with the disaster relief, recovery. The Hope Center, which is a nonprofit here, provided a lot of the services up there in Paradise. 

And of course people had immediate housing needs. And so every move-in condition home here in Oroville was almost immediately snapped up. And so housing continues to be a challenge for our area. 

We have several projects coming. Redding, as you might be aware, of course, just had a boom up there. And one of their major developers is coming here to Oroville and we're getting ready to break ground potentially on a six-acre project for low-income housing. We have another 29-acre site that we're looking at for market-rate housing. We have also 172 lots being built out at the Vista Del Oro, which is out by the airport. The moment these things are available, people are buying them. And a lot of those people were from the Paradise area. And those things continue even through this whole COVID crisis. Real estate is still very strong in Oroville.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. Click the “play” button to listen to the entire interview.

Ken came to NSPR through the back door as a volunteer, doing all the things that volunteers do. Almost nothing – nothing -- in his previous work experience suggests that he would ever be on public radio.
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