Stylist Brenda Didier works on Diane Heuser’s hair Thursday at Hair Therapy LLC on Main Street. Hair Therapy closed for almost two weeks during the flood emergency, and many customers sought service elsewhere after April’s voluntary evacuation. (Steve Browne/VCTR) 

By Steve Browne
Valley City Times-Record

Now into summer, Ken Schmitz is still dealing with revenue loss related to spring flooding.
The owner of S & S Auto Electric watched in April as dikes went up on his building’s stretch of Main Street, blocking the garage entrance and forcing customers to use a narrow walkway from the parking lot.
Private contractors removed the dikes around Schmitz’s store in late April. But a pump put in place after the April 17 sewer line collapse is still blocking the business.
“For April, business was down about 40 percent,” S & S owner Ken Schmitz said. “Both doors were blocked, and we were doing business off the sidewalk.” Schmitz said about one-third of his business is auto repair.
S & S also relies on equipment sales and formerly used drive-by advertising on its sidewalk. But due to the pump, no one can even drive by, said Parts Manager John Svenningsen.
S & S isn’t the only Valley City business in this position. When businesses closed during spring flooding, they saw revenue go down as dikes went up.
Dikes disrupted traffic. The sewer line collapse also forced a mandatory shuttering of many businesses, including restaurants.
“I’d estimate my losses were equivalent to being closed for two months,” said Kelly Tabor, owner of the Broken Spoke Family Restaurant & Saloon on Central Avenue. The city made restaurants close, saying they were nonessential.
“A few years ago we had a fire and had to completely rebuild, it took me 10 days,” Tabor said. “This felt eerier than that.”
Business owners contacted for this article were reluctant to give exact amounts they lost due to the flood. Some said flooding caused revenue to decrease by at least half.
Businesses located away from the dikes were affected by the April 14 voluntary evacuation and mandatory closure due to the sewer collapse.
Employees at Hair Therapy LLC, 1028 W. Main St., are independent contractors who work on commission. When the business is closed, they don’t get paid.
 “The flood mainly affected us by people canceling,” said owner Christina Anton. “The sewer collapse really kicked us in the pants. We had to close for almost two weeks, but the bills kept coming in.
“Once we opened again, we called people who’d canceled. But many were still out of town and a lot of them cut their hair cut out of town.”
Anton said all her stylists have applied for unemployment, and none of them have yet heard from the state. She estimates revenue losses of several thousand.
But some businesses say they did well during the flood.
Market Place Liquors Manager Denise Willson said people who rarely drank alcohol came during the flood, saying they needed the “stress relief.
“During the closing we joked this was a necessary business,” Willson said.
Sassy Styles owner Dede Hejtmanek, whose business is at 205 2nd Ave. N.E. and is behind the dike that had surrounded City Hall, said her business was affected surprisingly little by being enveloped by dikes.
“Besides the fact that I had to be closed for two weeks, the dikes haven’t affected me too much,” Hejtmanek said. “My clients just climbed over or walked around them.”
Still, she estimates losses of about $1,000. And she hasn’t yet figured the cost of cleaning her carpet after customers tracked in clay from the dikes.
“We had a decrease of about half (of normal revenue) in the three weeks the dikes were up,” said Cindy Waggen, manager of Marketplace Foods, 148 Central Ave. S.
“Business is getting better, slowly but surely,” she said. “We just have to be patient.”