Point Roberts grocery store owner ‘hopeful’ with border reopening
Oct 14, 2021, 4:52 PM
The owner of Point Roberts’ only grocery store says she is “guardedly hopeful” after the news that the U.S. land border will be reopening to vaccinated Canadians in November.
Border communities throughout Northern Washington like Blaine, Lynden, and Bellingham have suffered the loss of Canadian tourists during the past 19 months of the closure, but perhaps no one was hit harder than Point Roberts.
“I’m just hopeful this is the beginning of the road to recovery,” said Ali Hayton, owner of the International Marketplace grocery store.
Sitting on a spit of land accessed only by driving 25 miles through British Columbia, three-quarters of the homes in Point Roberts are the vacation homes of Canadians who have not been able to get in — depriving businesses of most of their customers. According to statistics from the Point Roberts Chamber of Commerce, Canadians make up 85% of the town’s yearly revenue.
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To make matters more challenging, the town was not only cut off from Canada all this time, but also from Americans until August 2021. While other border communities could still get tourist dollars from local Washingtonians, Americans were not able to drive to Point Roberts without an essential reason until the Canadian border reopened, since driving to Point Roberts involves driving through Canada.
And since Aug. 9, when vaccinated Americans were allowed to drive to Canada, Point Roberts residents have been able to go shop and dine in British Columbia. That was another hit, Hayton said, especially combined with the loss of two summer tourist seasons.
“Any increase is, to me, a win,” Hayton said. “Obviously I’d love the boom of summer, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”
She did wonder why this decision was not made in the early summer, when COVID case rates were lower, and when Canada announced that it would soon be letting vaccinated Americans in.
“I don’t understand the timing. I mean, numbers were so much lower in June than they are now,” Hayton said. “But, we also have more people vaccinated [now].”
The past 19 months have taken a toll on Point Roberts’ small businesses. Hayton said all but two restaurants have closed. Many other businesses have drastically reduced their hours.
For a while, it was dicey as to whether or not Hayton’s grocery store would be able to survive. Even getting a $100,000 grant on Governor Jay Inslee’s orders over the summer to be able to continue providing essential goods to residents was not enough to solve all her problems, as she said the store has been losing tens of thousands of dollars every month this year.
Now, however, with the promise of Canadian homeowners coming down to check on their properties and restock their fridges, she can confidently tell her employees that the business will keep going.
“If we get every single homeowner to come down and spend Thanksgiving with us, it’s going to help so much,” she said.
Of course, it will not be entirely smooth sailing. Hayton said it will be a challenge to try to guess how much business will be returning and how soon when it comes to building back up on products and staffing.
Additionally, there will be the logistical details of having to increase COVID testing options in Point Roberts, since every Canadian returning home will need to show a negative test from the past 72 hours. Unless they are staying for such a short time that any test they got in Canada before traveling will still be valid, the Canadians’ only option will be to get a test in Point Roberts.
Governor Inslee said at a press conference Thursday that he and state Health Secretary Dr. Umair Shah are in talks with Point Roberts and other border towns about this.
“We are going to be working with our communities to [make sure they are] having as easy a test option [as possible] for the Canadians so they can get home,” Governor Inslee said. “We love Canadians, but we know they want to go home, too.”
For those visiting Canadians, coming to Point Roberts will mean tending to houses that they haven’t been to for at least 19 months. Many neighbors have been kind enough to mow lawns and trim back bushes, but Hayton laughed that some homeowners may find “monsters in the refrigerator.”
“The parcel post, they’ve got to be so excited — they’ve had packages sitting there, some of them for two years, waiting for somebody to come and pick them up,” Hayton said. “Anything — anything at this point is better than where we’ve been.”
