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Myriad of ordeals for Placid businesses in wake of blackout

Guests convened with food and drink in the generator-lit lobby of the Golden Arrow Resort, a couple dozen remaining past the midnight hour Sunday during the 19-hour blackout. Like many other hotels, hallways and guest rooms at the resort were without light during the outage. (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

LAKE PLACID — No injuries may have been reported, and the spirits of locals and tourists seemed to remain high through Saturday’s blackout, but businesses inevitably were left licking their wounds after what was supposed to be en emphatic exclamation point to a promising Presidents Week.

The man who had a major hand in getting the village back on line, longtime village electric department Superintendent Peter Kroha, knows this, as his son Stephen Kroha is the general manager at the Lake Placid Pub & Brewery.

Though the restaurant and bar was able to remain open, serving beer by candlelight until 11 p.m. Sunday, the establishment lost a considerable amount of money due to food that needed to be thrown away when it was unable to be safely preserved.

“Because it was a perfect storm. It was President’s Week. It was Saturday night. Every hotel was full, and the hotels lost a lot of business,” Peter Kroha said. “Our restaurants had to throw food away. My son manages the Pub & Brewery and they had to throw everything out of the walk-in (refrigerators) because the temperature just wasn’t right.

“You can’t take a chance of serving somebody,” he continued. “It affected a lot of customers and a lot of businesses only because there were so many people in town.”

Electricity is out at the Downtown Diner on Main Street, Lake Placid, Saturday night. (Enterprise photo - Antonio Olivero)

In the wake of the blackout, specifics of just how much revenue was lost for the village business scene as a totality was not immediately known.

Of the dozens upon dozens of restaurants, shops and hotels without power throughout the village, the Downtown Diner was one not affected on Saturday, but hit hard Sunday. Owner Gioia DiChristina closed shop for the entire day after many of her employees travelled over from Saranac Lake to a cold and lightless building.

The restaurant is usually flooded from early Sunday mornings until about 2 p.m., and DiChristina estimated her restaurant was deprived of up to $5,000, though open the day of the storm.

“It was awful,” DiChristina said. “We had the best week. We had such a great week. It was awesome. The whole week, Monday through, it was three times what last year was. So it was such a great week, I was like, ‘Yeah, we are going to have a great Sunday!’ And, nothing. Sunday is always a big day for us.

“And I was talking to my friend (owner of) Lisa G’s (restaurant on the Station Street corner),” she continued. “I called her. Her phone was dying, she couldn’t really talk — that was in the morning (Sunday). She said she lost her whole Saturday — her whole Saturday night. I didn’t even think about that. That’s rough. She had tons of reservations.”

Main Street, Lake Placid, as it was seen around 10 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 25 without power (Enterprise photo — Antonio Olivero)

Only some lodging establishments in the village were able to provide full or partial electricity and heat by generator. The Pines Inn was not one of them, as owner Jill Cardinale Segger said emergency lights lit the lobby and stairwells for several hours with antique gas lanterns used in the main sitting room in the evening.

“Most guests gathered there by the fire relaxing, snacking and enjoying some wine,” Cardinale Segger said.

“A few guests were annoyed at the situation, which we explained was widespread and certainly was being handled as well as it could by the village electric company,” she added.

Cardinale Segger said only one reservation checked out to drive home and only one more asked for a refund. The biggest struggle, she said, was feeding guests Saturday evening.

“Many (guests) went to the grocery store for simple things that they could eat by the fire,” she said, “We provided plates, etcetera and tried to make things as comfortable as possible.”

Down Saranac Avenue, at the High Peaks Resort and Lake House, general manager Matthew Wheeler said a large portion of the hotel’s approximate 400 guests — near capacity — convened throughout the hotel’s first floor lobby area, which was lit by generator.

Wheeler said a generator powered essential controls and functions in the main resort building, enabling guests to use their card keys to electronically access their rooms, which Wheeler said were lit surprisingly well by the lights in the hotel’s courtyard.

He said the outage struck during the middle of the most popular check-in time Saturday. Once hotel personnel realized it wasn’t going to be short-lived, they put together a $10 dinner buffet of food such as burgers, hot dogs and egg salad – something they repeated Sunday morning.

“People really used every surface in the lobby,” Wheeler said. “I think everybody kind of wanted to be here. There were a couple hundred people throughout the first floor.”

“We didn’t have to tell anybody to leave,” he added. “There was a small handful of rooms that just wanted to go, which was fine. And some rooms not able to make it in.”

Wheeler added that the resort handled a small number of refund requests on a case-by-case basis.

Back down Saranac Avenue, inside the Placid Pond shopping plaza, the staff at Terry Robards Wine & Spirits weren’t far from the carnage of dozens of trees down on state Route 86 headed to Saranac Lake. Still, the wine ship remained open until about 7:30 p.m. Saturday, by flashlight.

“Everything was pitch black,” said general manager Tim Robinson. “It was not wise to remain open (any longer). On the whole, we did not see that much of an impact on business, other than the inconvenience. It was our decision to remain open and sales were only slightly down from a typical Saturday night. We saw many of our regular customers earlier in the day.”

On the other end of Main Street, when Central Garage general manager Jay Strack wasn’t out towing cars from ditches in Wilmington or getting his own generators back on line, he saw business creep by. He estimated he took a monetary hit between $8,000 and $10,000.

Inefficiency due to a lack of electricity not only threw the business community for a loop, it affected Kroha and the electric department as well.

The electric superintendent said the 19-plus-hour blackout caused something he hadn’t experienced before in his roughly 4 decades with the department. After power returned Sunday, he said his crew deployed to about a half-dozen second homes that had power, though homeowners were reporting outages.

“We learned a lot of people have second homes here with apps on their phone, and we are getting calls that their generators are running. And we send a crew and by the time we get there the generator stopped,” Kroha said. “It’s a whole different set of problems coming up, where people are calling us to let us know their problem is out, but it’s actually on and they don’t know it’s on.

“It’s something new with technology,” he continued. “So we made a few phone calls today and advised customers, we have to get a different way of doing this.”

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