During the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple financial relief programs targeted businesses. Forced to shut their doors, the first days of lockdown sometimes came with an abrupt drop in revenue, especially for the sector of the Kenai Peninsula that relies on tourism. Business owners consistently say they prioritized keeping staff employed.
It’s an overcast day at Alaska Rivers Company in Cooper Landing. Ten people clad in rain suits step from a small wooden dock into a cherry red raft. Once everyone’s seated, a guide pushes them into the middle of the turquoise Kenai River. It’s a typical summer day for the company. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, things weren’t so bustling.
“The first time I rode down the river that I can remember, or helped row down the river, I was probably about 13,” said Erik Route. He’s co-owned Alaska Rivers Company with his wife, Cory, for 10 years. “So this has definitely been a part of my life, here on the upper Kenai.”
Like a lot of guiding companies, they operate seasonally. By March 2020, Route says they’d already staffed the upcoming summer season and secured reservations. But then, the cancellations rolled in.
“All of a sudden, we were refunding just like crazy,” he said. “We refunded so much that the credit card company called us and didn't want to use us anymore because we were refunding so much.”
Route used roughly $100,000 in loans from the Paycheck Protection Program to keep staff employed in 2020 and in 2021. He also got a $15,000 loan through the American Rescue Plan Act and a grant from the Kenai Peninsula Borough’s CARES Act program.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough redacted award amounts in a public information request filed by KDLL for copies of detailed expenditure reports associated with the CARES Act.
“All that money went to payroll and so that was the biggest benefit – knowing that we had committed to them, they had committed to us, and we could still honor our commitment,” he said. “In a different form than it was supposed to be, but that was the best part of it.”
A mile and a half upriver is Bob Rima’s Drifters Lodge. He sits on a campfire chair made out of a tree stump. The Kenai River flows behind him.
The lodge and guide company are Rima’s retirement plan. But when more than half a million dollars in cancellations rolled in in 2020, he says he had one thing going through his mind.
“How are you going to survive this?” he said.
Rima received more than $600,000 in federal COVID relief dollars. Most of that came from the Paycheck Protection Program. The company also got a $10,000 economic injury disaster grant and a small business grant from the Kenai Peninsula Borough. And he says he asked customers to help “carry the burden” by pushing trips back one year.
“You’ve got to remember this is one on their bucket list,” he said. “So it was almost an easy sell. Almost.”
Some people still wanted their money back.
Rima’s wooden lodge also briefly hosted a couple dozen commercial trawlers, who were under a state-mandated quarantine after arriving in Alaska, but before heading to the fishing grounds. He says it was a financial godsend.
Rima says he never considered shutting down completely.
“No, that’s defeatist,” he said.
He says he was in an OK place financially, thanks to a line of credit at the bank, friends who were willing to chip in if needed and his 401k. His biggest qualms about applying for federal aid? The paperwork.
“I assessed the different opportunities, and then the PPP came out, and, oh my God, trying to fill that darn thing out. Get the heck out of here,” he said.
Like with local governments, building a more robust online presence is something businesses focused on, too.
“I did things like create a virtual tour of what we just experienced here,” said Louie Mauer, co-owner of Bear Creek Winery in Homer. “So doing some video of that, doing some audio, and then being able to provide that for people. Or I did a few virtual tastings, where people would order the wine, and then I would talk them through it.”
If Mauer sounds a little echoey, it’s because he’s standing in the winery’s production facility, amid towering fermentation tanks. The facility is a stone’s throw from the company’s tasting room and lodge, where visitors can sample classic Alaska flavors – like black currant, blueberry and rhubarb.
You can find Bear Creek Winery’s trademark white bear label at most liquor stores on the Kenai Peninsula. But since the pandemic, it’s also a lot easier to buy wine outside of Alaska.
“We doubled our shipping volume that year,” he said. “Because everybody was like, ‘OK, I can't go shop, I can't taste, I can’t do things, but I can still get what I want. I'll just order it.’”
But Mauer says their operations during the pandemic were marked by unpredictability. Supply chain delays made it more challenging to source raw materials, like glass bottles. And their business was shuttered outright for six weeks starting in March, including their tasting room and lodge.
“Over half my staff were kind of jobless, so to speak,” he said. “So we kind of pivoted.”
An $85,000 loan through the Paycheck Protection Program helped him keep staff employed. During lockdown, Mauer says they focused on deferred maintenance projects. They repainted the tasting room, upgraded lodge decor and converted an old production space into an employee break room.
When Mauer was able to reopen the winery’s tasting room, things looked a little different. Staff and visitors wore masks and bar stools were spaced six feet apart.
“For a while it was limited in the volume of people we could do,” he said. “And so we were trying to set up other tables in our back room and stuff to still be able to accommodate groups.”
Mauer, Route and Rima all say business exceeded expectations in 2021. State officials launched a concentrated in-state tourism campaign that encouraged Alaska residents to vacation in-state.
“Twenty-twenty-one was — I'm sure anybody in the industry, in the tourist industry, can relate to this in Alaska — like an explosion,” Mauer said. “Like everybody really wanted to go do stuff.”
In Cooper Landing, Route observed the same trend, which he says appears to have been an outlier.
“Twenty-twenty-one was an extremely crazy season, really around,” he said. “I mean, there were so many people everywhere. It was unreal.”
According to federal data, more than $152 million worth of paycheck protection loans were offered to Kenai Peninsula businesses, nearly all of which went to payroll. That doesn’t include almost $100 million awarded to Alaska through a restaurant-specific grant program, or another $17 million specific to shuttered venue operators, like performing arts venues and movie theaters.
Rima, the Cooper Landing Lodge owner wary of all that paperwork, ultimately applied for, received and used federal relief dollars. In retrospect, he says he’s thankful for the visitors who patronized his business when things started to open back up. He says Alaska residents helped fill the gap, looking for a way to get outside with friends and family. But he says he owes a lot more to a bigger group of people.
“I cannot thank the U.S. citizens that paid taxes enough, and that's just really the truth,” he said. “I mean, we needed it, we used it, and we're better off because we used it, and it helped get us back on track.”
This was the fourth installment in a new reporting series by KDLL called “What a Relief,” which looks at the impact and legacy of federal COVID-19 relief funds distributed to the Kenai Peninsula. Tomorrow, hear from the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District about the ways more than $30 million in federal funding facilitated a pivot to remote learning and kept staff employed. This reporting was supported by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism.
