Signs Washington’s economy is restarting

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Traffic is picking up.

Dentists are open again with new safety protocols.

At The Bellevue Collection, stores have been open for curbside pickup for the last week.

They are all signs that the economy is restarting again.

It's encouraging for Joe Fain, president of the Bellevue Chamber.

“As I see the shops starting to slowly reopen, pickup more common, as I see more organizations get together and help one another set up internet portals so they can go online, which they haven't done before, that's a great reason to be optimistic and to be proud of our region,” Fain said.

Restaurants, such as Yea's Wok in Newcastle, have also had to adapt and transition to takeout only. And even with some looking ahead to more normalcy with in -person dining during phase 2, restaurant owner Winnie Huang said not so fast.

“It's hard to balance, so we would rather to wait a little bit to keep the people, not a lot of people getting sick,” Huang explained.

The family -owned restaurant has been around for 27 years. Even though she wants to bring back her workers who were laid off, she needs to figure out how to do the right thing for them and the diners. Huang said she is even considering a reservation requirement for contact tracing purposes. Even though the governor said it’s no longer a requirement for restaurants to collect customers' information, she shares it's something they may do even if it means costing the restaurant some business because she believes it's important.

“We wish we could reopen again but reopen we don't want to be very, very dangerous for the customer and put our in danger,” Huang added.

Even with these signs of reopening, there are difficult decisions to be made, as there is so much.

“The path forward is a little unclear. We don’t know the trend of the virus. Don’t know the effect of restrictions and lighten them on resurgence or whether economy can really restart with those restrictions in place,” Fain said.

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