Hi, neighbo(u)rs: Detroit businesses look forward to return of Windsorites
Border expected to reopen in early November
During the pandemic, the lack of Canadian customers at Detroit's famous Eastern Market has been noticed — and they've been missed.
"We missed our Windsorites, if that's the correct term," said Sam Morykwas, senior marketing manager of Eastern Market Partnership.
"I don't think people always understand how close the Eastern Market is to Windsor and how frequently people come over, especially to our Saturday market. And we've also seen a lot of people jumping in on social media with messages of, you know, 'can't wait till the border's back open' and 'we're excited to be there' and 'I can't wait to see my favourite vendors again."
But the wait is almost over for those reunions between vendors and customers, between sports fans and their teams, between families, friends — and of course, neighbours and neighbors (depending on which side of the border you're on).
On Tuesday night, U.S. officials announced that the land border would reopen to fully vaccinated travellers from Canada sometime in early November.
It's the first time that non-essential visitors will be allowed to enter the country by land since March 2020.
And for Bob DiMattia, owner of Mexicantown Restaurant located right by the Ambassador Bridge Detroit-side, that's meant far fewer customers than usual.
"It's been tough, we love our Canadian customers," he said.
"I still talk to some of my regular customers and kind of make the jokes like, 'oh I'll throw a couple bottles of margaritas in the river and hopefully it floats across and gets to you guys.'"
The restaurant also used to have Monday and Friday night promotions where customers could purchase their meals with Canadian money.
On those nights, DiMattia said it would often get "crazy."
"You'd have hour wait, sometimes up to two hour waits to get a table and we are a large restaurant ... we can seat close to over 200 at a time. It was a fun time, there's a lot of stories, you talk to many different people ... it's definitely a lot different now," he said.
'Definitely missed our neighbours'
Things being different was echoed by Katie Edmunds, retail operations manager for Detroit's Third Man Records store.
Earlier this week, the venue held its first in-store concert since the pandemic hit, but a few audience members were missing.
"We had to refund several tickets because some people in Canada bought them and they weren't able to come and cross the border," said Edmunds.
The store, which sells limited edition and hard-to-find items, also had several calls from Canadians who were unable to make those purchases during the pandemic.
She said it's been an "odd vibe" for Windsorites and Detroit residents not to be able to socialize and do business together.
"We definitely missed our neighbours, I mean 100 per cent. And we missed going over there too," she said.
With files from Jennifer LaGrassa