Businesses in Shockoe Bottom prepare for Hurricane Florence impact

RICHMOND, VA (WWBT) - As Hurricane Florence inches closer to the East Coast, businesses in Shockoe Bottom are preparing for impact.

The Shockoe Bottom neighborhood often floods even with just torrential rain, so businesses along Main Street aren’t taking the news of Hurricane Florence lightly. They want to make sure their stores are protected.

Montie Sellers, the operations manager for Born 2B Great Thrift Boutique started bringing items from the basement to higher ground days ago. He said in previous hurricanes and storms, the basement flooded.

“Anytime we get like a huge downpour, we get flooding down here, not just this building but flooding throughout the area even with a hard rain pour it floods down here pretty good,” Sellers said. “We’ve been making sure we’ve been clearing out our basement and all of the prone to flooding areas.”

Benjamin Harris, the president of Stockpile Men's Boutique began bringing clothes from the basement in his store to higher ground on Tuesday.

"The dilemma right now is to get all of this stuff on this side and that side of the store, upstairs," Harris said.

Many businesses in this area were devastated by Tropical Storm Gaston back in 2004, including Bottoms Up Pizza on Dock Street. The restaurant was forced to close for a year and rebuild.

Charlie Lichter has been the general manager of the pizza restaurant since 1991 and says he's seen many storms impact the business and area but had never seen anything like the destruction Gaston caused.

"Once the pumps that haul the storm and sewage water under the river to the treatment plant on the south side, when they failed, we went from two feet of water outside the restaurant that day to more than 10 feet," Lichter said.

The water also seeped inside the building, rising six feet. It’s why the news of Florence hitting Richmond hits close to home.

"The biggest thing right now is to watch the path of the storm to see what potential rainfall we'll get here in Richmond, Lichter said.

Since Gaston, Richmond has spent $20 million dollars in upgrades to improve the sewer and storm water drainage system and water pumps.

While Bottom’s Up Pizza was rebuilding, they also made changes to their design to accommodate flood waters. It’s why this time around, Lichter says, he feels prepared for whatever Florence may bring.

“We’ve seen a difference in how the rain water dissipates after the improvements that they made,” Lichter said. “You can only hope that the plans that are put in place work when they need.”

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