Page 13 - BusinessWest September 14 2020

Springfield
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“When there is a vaccine, or when our numbers are so low that people feel safe and feel willing to go back out, the responsiveness will be there,” he noted. “My concern is making sure that the businesses we have are still in busi- ness when we get there.”
When We Meet Again
While he talked about COVID-19 using mostly the present tense, Sarno also spent a good deal of time talking about the future.
He said the pandemic will — even- tually and somehow — relent. And, as he said earlier, he is confident the city will rebound, and quickly, and perhaps return to where it was before ‘COVID’ became part of the lexicon. For a refer- ence point, he chose Red Sox Winter Weekend in January, an event staged by the team but hosted by MGM Spring- field. It brought thousands of people to the city, filling hotels and restaurants and creating traffic jams downtown as motorists tried to maneuver around closed streets and various gatherings.
“When there is a vaccine, or when our numbers are so low that people feel safe and feel willing to go back out, the responsiveness will be there. My concern is making sure that the businesses we have are still in business when we get there.”
In many ways, Red Sox Winter Weekend is emblematic of all that’s been lost due to the pandemic. It won’t all come back overnight, Sarno and Sheehan noted, but the vibrancy will return.
“COVID-19 has really knocked us for a bit of a loop,” the mayor said, stating the obvious. “But I think there there’s
a lot of pent-up ... not only frustration, but desire to get back out there, so when we defeat this, I really think we’re going to rebound very nicely, and even quickly, because we continue to move projects forward and put new projects on the board.”
This optimism extends to MGM, which had been struggling to meet projections (made years ago) for gross gambling revenue before the pandem- ic, and has, as noted, been operating at one-third capacity since early summer, with the hotel and banquet facilities closed.
“When MGM was hustling and bus- tling, with shows coming in, downtown
was thriving,” Sarno said. “I’m hoping that, as we head into the last quarter and eventually the holiday season, if people can regain their confidence in going out to places like this, we see things pick up.”
And there will be some positive changes to greet visitors as they return, starting with a new Marriott.
Indeed, work continues on a mas- sive project that Peter Marks, general manager of the hotel, insists is not a renovation, because that word doesn’t do justice to the massive overhaul. He instead said the hotel has been “rei- magined” and “redesigned.”
as the case may be — next spring or summer, the 266-room facility is get- ting a new look from top to bottom, inside and out. The most visible sign of the change is a new, more modern façade that greets visitors coming over the Memorial Bridge. But the entire hotel is being made over to new and stringent standards set by Marriott.
“This is not a reflagging; it’s a new build, and that’s why the work is so extensive,” he explained. “Everything that that a guest could see or touch
is being replaced. Beyond that, we’ve moved walls, we’ve moved emergency staircases in the building to accom-
what has been done.”
The timing of the project — during
the middle of a pandemic — has been beneficial in one respect: there was minimal displacement of guests due to the ongoing work and, therefore, not
a significant loss of overall business. But the pandemic has also been a hin- drance because it’s made getting need- ed construction materials much more difficult, causing delays in the work and uncertainty about when it can all be completed.
“You might get a shower wall in, but not the shower tub,” Marks explained.
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Springfield
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FEATURE
SEPTEMBER 14, 2020 13