By Scott D. Johnston
For The Grays Harbor News Group
The City of Ocean Shores will release traffic counts for the last two weeks on Thursday. Meanwhile, anecdotal accounts suggest that the repeated urgings by officials, experts and authorities for folks to stay home on Easter weekend seem to have achieved at least some moderate success.
Motorized vehicle access to area beaches has been closed by the city and Grays Harbor County, but people can still park at beach approaches and walk or ride bicycles on the beach, except for Damon Point, which is under Department of Natural Resources jurisdiction, and has been closed completely. Commercial lodging inside the city limits has also been shut down, with a few exceptions.
Saturday afternoon, this reporter observed 103 cars parked at eight local beach approaches, covering over six miles from Damon Road, just outside the north city limits, through the non-driving approaches at the jetty and Damon Point Sunday afternoon, the distribution among those locations was different, but the total was 104. The totals were well under half of the estimated total parking capacity of the approach areas.
That matched closely with what Ocean Shores Mayor Crystal Dingler said she and her husband counted both days, about 100.
“The weekend before last, we saw 139 including Damon Point and the jetty. So, I think some good was done. While I saw people, I didn’t see a tremendous amount,” she said.
Dingler was one of four “local leaders” who were part of Gov. Jay Inslee’s televised news conference Friday afternoon, during which she told potential visitors, “… please, we love you, come back to see us in the summer when things are better, but now is not the time.”
The weekend was down around 45% for the local McDonald’s restaurant, at the corner of Point Brown Avenue and Chance a la Mer Boulevard in the center of downtown Ocean Shores, even though much of its competition is closed and the rest reduced to carryout and delivery according to Jon Martin, who is operations director for six area stores. He and his wife also own and operate the Martin Bruni Liquor Store, a block west. He said that business saw an even greater drop, although the restrictions on restaurants had already dealt a major blow to sales.
He said he and his wife observed there were “not a lot of people in town. Most were people we knew. I think a lot of people decided not to come.”
Martin, who is also in his second term on the Ocean Shores City Council, said he is “worried about the economy. After a month, it gets really bad” for many businesses. That is part of “a real challenge for our city.”
Social media accounts offered a broad range of observations, from those commenting that there were not many in town to some saying Damon Point was packed, and others commenting that camping/RV lots were seeing weekend use. One frequent observer of the local beaches reported that there were relatively few people on the beach and those that were, were observing extreme social distancing by placing themselves hundreds of feet away from others.
Photo by Scott D. Johnston Walkers use the Damon Road beach approach just north of the Ocean Shores city limits on Saturday afternoon, when 10 cars were parked nearby.
