SYDNEY, N.S. — Walking through the doors at Mayflower Mall felt a little different for shoppers on Friday.
The Sydney mall opened to the general public for the first time since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak in March and things were anything but normal.
As customers entered the Grand Lake Road location, they were greeted by employees, who explained the guidelines and protocol for the mall.
Like many businesses, arrows were placed on the floor for shoppers to follow and social distancing of six-feet was required.
Outside of stores, customers lined up as individual businesses set various limits for those entering their favourite shops.
Laura Lee Burke, manager of Pseudio and Envy retail stores, didn’t know what to expect with the reopening but considered things to be going well Friday afternoon.
“There’s been more traffic than I thought there was going to be,” said Burke. “People have been following protocol and there hasn’t been any issues, so we’re happy.”
For the most part, Burke said people were happy to have the mall reopen.
“They have somewhere to go now,” she said. “They’ve been pretty shack wacky, I guess you could say, so I think we’re all happy things are open again.”
Prior to Friday’s partial reopening, the inside of the mall had been closed for close to two months. In total, the 70-store mall had 18 businesses open with more expected in the coming days.
Mayflower Mall manager Greg Morrison, who could be seen walking through the mall, said crowds were a “manageable size.”
“We had nothing to compare it to at first, so I was scared there would be too many people, but it’s been just the right size,” he said. “We’re extremely excited to be open and things have been going well so far.”
Hand sanitizing stations were located at each entrance to the mall. Some individual stores also had sanitization stations outside of their respective locations.
“We have extra cleaners in cleaning all the major touch points throughout the mall,” said Morrison. “We’re trying to keep it as clean as possible.”
Morrison couldn’t say for sure whether or not employees would remain located at the entrance to the mall for the foreseeable future.
“We’ll see how it works,” said Morrison. “We’ll keep going until it’s not needed.”
Stephanie Tomko, regional manager for Charm Diamond Centre, was eager to open her business to customers Friday afternoon and said the company is well prepared.
“We have a large section of PPE, which was supplied by our head office, so we have everything from sneeze guards, face shields, gloves, masks, sanitizing stations, and proper cleaning products,” said Tomko.
“The biggest thing is to make sure that my staff are comfortable and confident – we have an operational plan we need to follow to keep both staff and customers safe.”
Tomko said shoppers will be allowed to try on product at the store as usual.
“If somebody wants to try on a ring or necklaces or anything, we clean every product immediately after the customer tries it on,” she said. “As far as jewelry repair, we clean everything before we send it out to our jewellers.”
The Mayflower Mall will be open Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Sunday from 12-5 p.m.
Among the stores not open on Friday were Winners and Bath & Body Works. As of press time, no announcement was made as to when those businesses would reopen. Other stores also remained closed and did not provide an estimated opening date.
