HONESDALE, Pa. — Main Street in Honesdale is lined with small business after small business, nearly all of which are either closed or offering limited service.
"We came off of slow season, which is January/Feburary, and we really look forward to March and April and spring, and traffic and people coming out to shop small. And we kind of went right from a slow season into a slower, more devastating season," said Jill McConnell, owner of Finders Keepers Consignment Boutique in Honesdale.
Wayne County has 109 confirmed cases of COVID-19, but it's included in the Northeast region of the state and is not allowed to begin reopening on Friday.
Small business owners such as McConnell, who has owned Finders Keepers Consignment Boutique for 11 years, are ready to get back to work.
"We're sustaining right now. But even sustaining is really really difficult," said McConnell.
Joyce Debastiani has owned the Wallflower boutique in Honesdale since 1985.
She says she'd be willing to implement social distancing guidelines in her store and believes her loyal customers would respect those rules.
"I think we're a smart and conscientious community, that we get what we have to do," said Debastiani. "I walk into some of the big-box stores, and I notice that they have a lot of protocols now in place, but not everybody's following them. In a small location, you can have protocols in place. And I'm not afraid to say, 'hey, you need to have a mask on,' or 'can you distance a little bit and give this customer room?'"
If there's a silver lining that comes out of this for small business owners, it's knowing that their customers care about their survival.
"A lot of them are messaging me on Facebook saying; I have birthday money, I'm saving it for you. They want us to make it, they want us to be here, they know we add something very special to our community," said Debastiani.
The Wayne County commissioners say they'd like to be considered for reopening "as soon as possible."
"We would like to be looked at as a stand-alone county or at least organized into a group that has less numbers that illustrate the same things that our numbers illustrate," said Commissioner Brian Smith.
The small business owners we spoke to say all they can do now is hope that they're included in the next round of counties that begin the reopening process.
The case was similar in Wyoming County, as we reported on Monday.
A spokesperson from the Department of Health responded to our question regarding Wyoming County moving from "red" to "yellow," by saying, in part:
"Wyoming County is considered as part of the northeast, where there has been widespread cases of COVID-19."