On Friday, May 1, 2020 … Dallas Proper moved from stay in place to Phase 1 opening, with continued suggested stay in place recommendation.
Restaurants were open with 25% occupancy maximums.
Malls were also open with shorter hours, i.e. 10 am to 6 pm with similar low occupancy regulations.
Masks are mandatory in any high volume area and for the most part most stores would not allow you in unless you had a mask.
Phase 1 Observations
Doing what Financial Planning nerds do, the entire weekend was spent checking the pulse of the consumer….
Here are the observations from across the City of Dallas ….
On Friday, a trip to the office for mail pickup revealed, zero …. nada, folks back at the office as well as surrounding office buildings ….
Again on Friday, it looked like about a 10% store opening rate and about the same amount of crowds.
Saturday moved up to about 15% crowd at one of the largest malls in the City.
A local strip center of mostly independent stores, was empty, with about a 5-10% participation rate among patrons, but with about 30-40% stores opening….usually cannot find a parking space – see picture below
Sunday seemed slightly slower than Saturday, across the board.
Oddly, a chance trip to a neighborhood Home Depot was stunning…. Never have seen the parking lot as full, could barely find a spot to park, and people were actually parking on the grass ….
Everyone was wearing a mask, and a chance chat with a manager while attempting to find my mandatory needed item, revealed the store had been this way from the beginning and when lock down measures were taken, allowing only 150 people in the store at a time, lines were hours long to get in …. hmmmmm
For those still on complete lock down (Donald The Brain and MANY more) it will be interesting to see how those with longer down time re-emerge?
The great news is everyone is certainly taking this serious, and that creates our own success!
Have a Great “Phase 1 Observations” Day!
John A. Kvale CFA, CFP