By Assunta Ng
It looked as though the businesses that will stay open in the International District during the scheduled 20-hour power outage by Seattle City Light (SCL) on Wednesday were limited. Many businesses chose to be closed.
“We had to pay for an expensive generator to keep our business open,” said Tomoko Matsuno, Uwajimaya’s chief executive officer. Yummy Bakery, located inside Uwajimaya’s food court and at another location across the street, would also be affected. Both locations decided to close for the day. The owner said its cakes would likely ‘turn to rubbish’ without electricity at the bakery.
The Uwajimaya deli was open, while other food court outlets were closed, as many small businesses could not afford a generator.
Green Village was another restaurant annoyed by the outage. “Is there compensation for us? The city should compensate for the loss of business. It caused a lot of hardships on small businesses,” said the Green Village owner.
SCL scheduled a 20-hour outage, but their estimate was a bit overboard.
“We originally thought the underground space would only allow two workers at a time, but when we got down there, we found that it could fit six,” said David Wernli of SCL.
SCL was able to get the electricity restored before 11 a.m., but the generous estimate may have affected businesses regardless, as I did not see very many people in the ID throughout the day. (end)
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