Some stores near Norfolk light rail stations see boost in sales

NORFOLK

Soon after The Tide’s electronic bell started ringing, so did Jean Riley’s cash register.

Her 7-Eleven store sits diagonally across Newtown Road and Curlew Drive from the easternmost stop on the city’s light-rail line. Since The Tide welcomed its first passengers six months ago, Riley has watched customers walk over from the station.

“In August, our water sales went up, and then that Slurpee machine,” said Riley, who has owned the 7-Eleven since 2007. “This store was like a supermarket. I was happy.”

The boon has continued. Sales at her store for December and January, which are usually slower months, have jumped 13 percent to 14 percent from a year earlier. Riley estimates that light rail has added as much as $1,000 in sales on some days, particularly at the end of the week, when people ride The Tide to restaurants and bars downtown to start their weekend.

“That parking lot will be packed on Fridays,” she said.

Riley’s store, which is across the city line in Virginia Beach, is among a handful close enough to Tide stops to notice a boost in business. While not many owners cited a significant increase in sales, some said the train has delivered customers they otherwise wouldn’t have drawn.

On Friday morning, Tara Johnson and her son rode light rail to the Newtown Road station to bring him to his nearby preschool. Before she headed back on the train to downtown Norfolk, where she lives and has a job cleaning office buildings, she crossed the street to 7-Eleven to grab something to eat.

It was her first time at Riley’s store. Johnson, 38, wearing a backpack and her uniform under her coat, spent $6.69 on some Asian-marinated chicken wings and a bottle of juice.

“I need to get breakfast before I go to work,” she said.

Tide ridership as of Jan. 31 has surpassed the city’s projections. An average of 4,642 people take the train on weekdays, and 4,850 on Saturdays, according to data that officials from Hampton Roads Transit, which operates light rail, presented to the City Council last week.

From the time Norfolk officials began pushing for light rail, they touted its prospective economic benefits, particularly its ability to attract new development near the tracks. The future rail line was part of the reason Amy Wyatt Metzger moved her cafe, Bean There Coffeehouse, from Chesapeake to Norfolk in 2010, she said.

“For the most part, it has brought a new awareness to downtown and to businesses that were relying solely on their own foot traffic,” said Metzger, whose cafe sits closer to the tracks than any other business, with windows overlooking the MacArthur Square station.

Sales at her shop are up about 20 percent, on average, in the six months of light-rail operation, Metzger said. Weather matters, she added; if it’s warm and sunny, The Tide creates a greater swell.

Most of Bean There’s new light-rail customers are leisure riders, families from other cities who ride The Tide for fun on weekends and cap the trip with a cafe treat, Metzger said. They come in groups with their kids.

Visitors walk up from the Sheraton or Marriott hotels near the waterfront just to check out The Tide and find out where it goes, Metzger said. Then, they wander into Bean There for a cup of coffee. Those taking light rail to an Admirals hockey game or a performance at Chrysler Hall or the Wells Theatre also now pass the cafe on their way.

“The walking pattern has changed dramatically because of the train,” Metzger said.

Eastern Virginia Medical School students have become new Bean There customers, she said. No longer worried about needing time to find a downtown parking space, they take light rail to get a quick coffee during class or hospital breaks.

Those riding The Tide to work downtown haven’t added much to Bean There’s business, Metzger said. “Generally, the commuters are people who already were our customers.”

Not every business near a Tide station has seen a surge in sales. For some, traffic spiked during light rail’s first week, when the city offered free rides.

“We were mobbed for lunch” at that time, said Matt Mancoll, owner of Bite, a bistro serving breakfast, lunch and take-out dinners on the street level of Wells Fargo Center downtown.

Bite opened in May – just three months before The Tide began carrying passengers to the station outside his door on Monticello Avenue – giving Mancoll little time to compare numbers once the trains arrived. Still, he said, the restaurant has gained “incremental” business.

Customers have ridden The Tide from Dominion Tower, at the other end of downtown, and from the Harbor’s Edge retirement complex next to the Eastern Virginia Medical Center/Fort Norfolk station, as well as from the medical school, Mancoll said.

“All in all, it has helped,” he said.

From the Civic Plaza station, riders looking across St. Paul’s Boulevard can’t miss the “Breakfast-Lunch” and “Gyros-Burgers” signs above the windows of Brick House Diner.

“For us, it’s perfect, because they get off the stop and they see us,” said John Routsis, who co-owns the diner with his brother, Bill. “People know where we’re at now.”

The biggest benefit of The Tide for Brick House is the commuting option for the staff, Routsis said. Three of his workers who live in Virginia Beach park at the Newtown Road station and ride to work most days. That saves him $80 per month in parking fees per worker.

Even more would use light rail if it were available earlier, he said. The diner’s first shift must get to work before The Tide starts its schedule at 6 a.m.

Routsis and other business owners said they’re still figuring out how to take better advantage of the additional traffic generated by light rail. On the Saturday in December when the city hosted the Grand Illumination parade, Routsis went downtown with his family and saw the Tide-riding crowd that Brick House could have tapped – if it were open on weekends.

This summer, for OpSail 2012 and other big events, he intends to correct that mistake. Brick House will open those weekends and stock extra water and other beverages, Routsis said.

The MacArthur Square stop is the second-busiest on the light-rail line – with 17 percent of passengers getting on or off there – after 23 percent at the Newtown Road stop.

MacArthur Center’s parking office faces the station across City Hall Avenue. Staff members have watched a stream of Tide riders head to the mall from the train and, sometimes, return to the tracks later with shopping bags, said Jim Wofford, the mall’s general manager.

That might not represent a gain, he acknowledged, if some MacArthur Center customers who used to drive and park are now taking light rail instead.

Nonetheless, Wofford believes that The Tide has brought bonus traffic to the mall, encouraging shoppers who otherwise might go elsewhere.

During the holidays, “when the parking spaces were at a premium,” he said, “we had a lot of folks that actually rode in on light rail.”

Between downtown and Newtown Road, the light-rail line runs through areas largely devoid of business activity. The Norfolk State University station sits high above and across busy Brambleton Avenue from a small shopping strip with a 7-Eleven store and a Chinese food take-out restaurant. At the Military Highway stop, the track runs along Curlew Drive, underneath and far from view of one of the city’s busiest commercial corridors – not that most riders would dare navigate the area to walk to The Gallery at Military Circle or Janaf Shopping Yard even if they were visible.

At the Newtown stop, though, the 7-Eleven has become an oasis. Riley has added inventory since August to meet the demand, in particular for bottled water, Gator-ade, iced tea, beer and wine.

Sales of hot food have grown to $245 daily from $60 to $75 before light rail. No food or drink is allowed on trains, but customers often have time to wait at the end of the line.

7-Eleven also sells Tide tickets, earning a small percentage of those sales, Riley said. A rider recently bought a seven-day pass for $17, she recalled.

Inside the rail cars and on billboards at some stops, an advertisement encourages riders to buy their Tide ticket at the convenience store – and grab a cup of coffee while they’re at it.