 [Washington Examiner] Baltimore-area businesses are adapting to a new routine two months after the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge, but many are still concerned about the downstream impact the March 26 accident will have on their bottom lines.
Seafood restaurants and vendors, a staple of the city’s identity, are particularly concerned with how increased traffic, coupled with a down crab season on the Eastern Shore, are impacting product supply heading into summer, the busiest time of the year.
Joe Gold, the general manager at Key Brewing, a brewery and restaurant in Dundalk on the eastern end of the Key Bridge, said the city is "used to tragedy."
"It’s just the nature of where we’re from, and we’re gritty folks," Gold said during an interview with the Washington Examiner. "I think the optimism in our city is divided in that the people that have been affected the most, probably, have the most optimism."
But Gold acknowledged that while local patrons, many of whom work at the Port of Baltimore, appear to be coming in more frequently, Key Brewing has also lost any new business coming across the water from the city proper.
"We’re literally cut off from sort of that side of the river, so you got to go up and around, and hazmats have to go all the way around, but we can go into the two tunnels," he said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. "But what’s happened is the commute from our side became more tedious on our people, but people that live on that side aren’t coming this way. They have other options."
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