At the Wall Street Journal, "In Ferguson, Mo., a Long Road Getting Back to Business":
FERGUSON, Mo.—Idowu Ajibola, 57, opened a pharmacy in this area eight years ago, tapping savings, family money and funds from his retirement plan. He added a beauty-supply business to the premises in 2008.The damage in Ferguson is just a fraction of the devastation the left is inflicting on America.
Mr. Ajibola’s fortunes changed last year after the shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black 18-year-old, by a white police officer. During a period of widespread unrest, looters cleaned him out of high-price items, such as packages of hair extensions that sold for around $200 each. Mr. Ajibola estimates the rioting cost him $50,000 in stolen or destroyed merchandise; another $50,000 in fixtures were ruined.
“I lost quite a few customers,” said Mr. Ajibola. “People wouldn’t come in. It was a bad situation.”
Ten months after Mr. Brown’s death, businesses are still struggling to rebound in this suburb of St. Louis whose population of 21,000 is two-thirds African-American and has a median household income of less than $40,000.
With sales and traffic down on West Florissant Avenue, the Ferguson area that bore the brunt of looting and vandalism, Mr. Ajibola, who emigrated from Western Nigeria more than 30 years ago, decided to convert his wrecked beauty-supply shop into a dollar store. The new place sells items such as coffee mugs and kitchen supplies—goods less likely to attract shoplifters or looters.
Nearly half of the roughly 500 businesses operating in Ferguson and adjacent communities, such as Dellwood and Jennings, suffered property damage or lost revenue as a result of the unrest, according to the regional development association, North County Inc. Sixteen businesses closed. Seven of those have yet to reopen, while four have relocated, according to a city tally.
In April, the nation was again reminded of the emotional and physical scars that can result from civil unrest. The death of a 25-year-old Baltimore black man, Freddie Gray, who died after being arrested, set off another wave of protests, riots and looting. Close to 400 businesses, most of them small, suffered some kind of property damage or inventory loss, according to the Baltimore Development Corp.
And yet the cities’ challenges are different. Baltimore has a larger tax base spread out over a diverse, stable middle class. It also enjoys a strategic location near the nation’s capital. As for Ferguson, “it’s going to be harder” to recover, said Bruce Katz, founding director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Katz notes that Ferguson has a relatively weak local economy. Local government in the region is split among dozens of municipalities with limited authority and funding, making it more difficult to spur growth.
Sales tax distributions to Ferguson fell 3.5% to $2.6 million in the period between August 2014 and May 2015 compared with the same period a year earlier, according to the Missouri Department of Revenue. This figure likely understates the pain felt by local business owners, since it includes receipts from Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other big-box stores that contribute a substantial portion of the total.
In December, Moody’s Investors Service assigned a “negative outlook” to Ferguson, which could mean a downgrade to its credit rating later on. A lower rating could affect rates at which the city can borrow money in the future...
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