ECONOMIC FORECAST
Alyssa Roost knows how to open a restaurant . She knows what to expect . When she opened Vine + Grain ( a wine and craft beer bar ) and Attraversiamo ( a farm-to-fork restaurant ) in Brentwood , each time she received about 100 resumes . About half were qualified applicants , giving her plenty of choices for hiring a strong team .
Then she tried to expand during COVID-19 . Technically her business is growing during the pandemic , but beneath the surface , it ’ s a more complicated story . In September 2021 , Roost and her husband Anthony ( both co-owners ) opened a new location of Vine + Grain in Sacramento ’ s Downtown Commons . Only 50 resumes rolled in and only a handful were qualified . Instead of hiring a team of 10 , she could only hire six . So they slashed some of their hours from 11 a . m . -9 p . m . to 3 p . m . -9 p . m ., and the wife-and-husband duo , who are also raising a 1-year-old , are now working 15-hour days . Instead of focusing on marketing in the office , Roost is waiting tables and her husband is back in the kitchen cutting a wheel of imported cheese . “ I have a lot of optimism ,” Roost says about her forecast for 2022 . “ But we ’ re much more anxietydriven than we have been in the past .” Roost could just as easily be commenting on the 2022 economic outlook for the Capital Region . Cautiously optimistic ? Yes . Flooded with risks and caveats and nuance ? Absolutely . “ I gave up trying to predict things about 15 months ago ,” says Mike Testa , president and CEO of Visit Sacramento . “ But my sense is ... we ’ ll continue to go in the right direction .”
Many of the region ’ s economic thinkers agree that the “ right direction ” is likely , but the headwinds of inflation , labor shortages , housing prices , never-ending remote work and inequity will continue to dog the region . The economy is like everyone ’ s favorite term in dating : “ It ’ s complicated .”
First , the good news : People are traveling , dining out and seeing live music again . Even with the lingering delta variant , a gauntlet of events ( like the 4-day Aftershock festival ) brought foot traffic back to downtown — 42 events in October through December alone , according to Michael
“ Things are going to be better . We ’ re moving in the right direction . ... There ’ s a new recognition that some of our communities , frankly , have not been invested in , like our rural communities , aging corridor communities , ethnic communities .”
AMANDA BLACKWOOD CEO , Sacramento Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce
Ault , executive director of the Downtown Sacramento Partnership , “ and we ’ re starting to see retailers benefit from that in a huge way .” Roost sees that spillover in the new Vine + Grain . “ More people are coming our way ,” she says , specifically citing concerts .
The same energy is seen in Placer County . “ In Roseville , our large mall ( Westfield Galleria at Roseville ) is thriving and surpassed pre-pandemic sales ,” says Scott Alvord , chair of the Placer County Economic Development Board and City of Roseville council member . “ Our unemployment is back to pre-pandemic levels and our commercial vacancies , other than office vacancies , are pretty low .”
Both Ault and Testa expect the strength of events to continue into 2022 , especially since events that were canceled due to COVID-19 have been rescheduled for the new year — 2021 ’ s loss could be 2022 ’ s gain , even if they fail to reach the pre-pandemic level of 586 in 2019 . Specifically , Testa says a total of 71 events were canceled in 2021 . Of those , 17 have already booked for 2022 . “ I ’ m confident that ( we ’ ll ) get all of them back , it ’ s just a matter of when .” Another barometer of economic health : hotel occupancy . Sacramento hotels are now between 40-60 percent full , according to Testa — well above 16 percent from the depths of 2020 but still lagging the pre-pandemic heyday of 83 percent . Look deeper and you ’ ll see a red flag . Testa says pre-pandemic the hotels were always packed midweek and then lighter on the weekends . Now that has flipped . The weekends have recovered but the midweek is soft . “ What that tells me is that a lot of leisure travel is happening ,” Testa says , “ but what ’ s still behind is the business travel .” And this is where the concerns begin .
The risks
If business travel is behind , so is the number of people who are actually at the office and doing business . No one thought that would be the case . Earlier in 2021 , plenty of companies “ talked to their staffs and did polls and said , ‘ In
46 comstocksmag . com | January 2022