On the Avenue, snow is a mixed bag for business

Posted 1/28/11

[caption id="attachment_2260" align="alignright" width="290" caption="Mary-Kay Bahner (left), an employee at Kilian’s for 15 years, and Linda Baldwin have been busy meeting customers’ needs …

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On the Avenue, snow is a mixed bag for business

Posted

[caption id="attachment_2260" align="alignright" width="290" caption="Mary-Kay Bahner (left), an employee at Kilian’s for 15 years, and Linda Baldwin have been busy meeting customers’ needs during the snowstorm. (Photo by Luke Herald)"][/caption]

Chestnut Hill businesses were mostly hoping for a return to normalcy Friday, after the neighborhood was buried under the snow from the storm that began Wednesday and ended early Thursday morning.

“We’re selling a lot of salt and shovels,” said Linda Baldwin, who has worked at Kilian’s Hardware for almost six years. “Everything that begins with an ‘s’: shovels, salt, sleds, scrapers.”

Two of the store’s employees, William Valiante and Michael Matos, spent about two hours shoveling the storefront Wednesday and then bringing in the store’s inventory.

“They spent hours and a lot of manpower bringing in all the salt,” Baldwin said. “It’s heavy.”

While Kilian’s profited from the snow, most other stores were adversely affected, such as Chestnut Hill Sports, Inc.

“January’s generally a slow month anyway, but the snow makes it worse,” said Tom Amodie, the store’s co-owner. “They didn’t plow the streets close to the curb,” motioning to the nearly six-foot wide, three-foot high pile of snow along the curb outside on Germantown Avenue.

[caption id="attachment_2261" align="alignleft" width="271" caption="Brian Reisman said his shop, Hideaway Music, has been empty since snow started falling Wednesday. (Photo by Luke Herald)"][/caption]

Brian Reisman, owner of Hideaway Music, agreed that the plowing left the avenue “not conducive to strolling.”

“Nobody’s come up here,” he said, as he was tidying the store’s shelves of records. “Nobody wants to go out.”

The snow forced Roller Express-O into closing at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, two hours earlier than usual. Business has since returned to normal.

“Yesterday morning we were surprised” by how many people came in, said Trudy Walters, who has worked as a cook for two years at the diner. “Today is good.” Nearly every table in the diner was full Friday morning.

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