The COVID-19 Effect on Five Points

Fathima Dickerson

Denver’s historic Five Points grooves to its very own tempo.  No matter the time of day; rain, sleet, or snow, the jukebox dude brings whatever rhyme, rhythm, or soul to Five Points.  From the corridor meet and greets to family reunions, people flock from all over just for the experience.  But as the COVID-19 global pandemic showed its face, it took the heart beat out of Five Points.  March 16, 2020 changed a lot of lives.  I don’t think anyone was prepared for The COVID-19 Effect. I know for a fact, Welton Street Café was not. 

When the city shut down and enforced the safer-at-home order, the culture of Welton Street Café died.  As a staple restaurant in Five Points, our service to the community is through food.  With nothing and no one moving, there was a deafening silence that hung over the corridor.  That type of stillness brought out a different level of concern not just for Welton Street Café but for the neighborhood.  How well were our neighbors doing?

The Five Points Business District is full of businesses that keep the heart of Five Points pumping.  The music venues along the corridor bring a lot of new visitors i.e. the type of foot traffic any business district would appreciate.  The food and beverage team keep the locals satisfied by nurturing whatever they are hungry or thirsty for.  COVID-19 took away the culture of music and changed the service of food and beverage completely.  Every rule about face mask, social distancing, and decreasing capacity, slowed down the pulse in Five Points.  We are barely breathing. 

With a pandemic this invasive, any business closure can and will interrupt the daily operation of your business.  Throughout this entire pandemic, food and beverage experience temporary and permanent closures which have led to disruptions with our suppliers.  Since March, we have had to adjust our food delivery, meat delivery, bread delivery, beverage delivery, linen delivery, and appliance maintenance services.  From this list of vendors, they have all experienced in-house lay-offs which delayed the services they provide for us. The anxiety of making sure vendors can supply what we need is sometimes week by week.  In actuality, this is our lifeline.

Small business owners in Five Points are barely holding themselves together.  If your business has not temporarily closed, you worry about your business supply just as much as you worry about keeping your staff.  By decreasing our hours and days of operation, we have had to really get creative with scheduling so that we are supporting the families we employ.  At this point in the pandemic, everyone has lost staff and that is mentally exhausting on any employer.  We are all hurting.

Right now Five Points is working to stay afloat.  Without the overflow or patrons and people working in the community, it impacts the neighborhood as a whole.  Now that businesses are slow or have closed, we are getting a lot of vandalism along the corridor as well as the unhoused making more of a presence in the neighborhood.  The last thing we need is for Five Points to appear unclean and unsafe.  This is a community that has a bright future but in the meantime, I hope no one forgets about Five Points.

As a concerned business and business owner, the impact of Covid-19 has put us all in uncomfortable spaces.  We need music, food and beverage, health and wellness, apparel, cannabis, beauty and barbers, banks, community spaces, community news, and community resources.  All of these great things are happening right here in Five Points.  We all have our own story to tell and we all matter.  During this fragile time, it is critical that we introduce ourselves if we don’t know each other, so that we can support our corridor.  Welton Street Café is sharing so that everyone knows that we are all in this together.  Stay encouraged.

Love Always,

Fathima Dickerson (Welton Street Café GM)

~If it affects your neighbor, it’s in the neighborhood~