South Street businesses want to revisit public safety after a sluggish unofficial end of summer

The Labor Day weekend was not what Selcuk Sal Kucuk, operator of His & Hers hookah lounge, was hoping for. Rock club Dobbs on South and hipster bar Tattooed Mom shared the disappointment.

Business owners said extended road closures around South Street on Saturday and Sunday made it difficult to access the business corridor. Typically, South Street is closed to vehicular traffic during the summer months but its numbered cross streets remain open, making it easier for people to navigate the area and find parking.

On Labor Day weekend, as on previous holiday weekends recently, the numbered streets were closed. Kucuk, whose hookah lounge is at Second and South Streets, blamed the detours for the little foot traffic over the weekend, which ultimately hurt his bottom line.

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The sluggish weekend reignited conversations about how best to balance public safety in a corridor that faces little violent crime, but was rocked by a mass shooting in June that left three people dead and injured 11. Despite conversations that followed the shooting — involving business owners, residents, and police — the matter is far from settled and the debate about how much police presence is adequate on weekends continues.

The end result: No one is happy.

“For every customer we had walking the street, we probably had five police officers,” Kucuk said about the holiday weekend. “It’s usually a police officer for 30 people.”

A Philadelphia Police Department spokesperson would not comment on deployments and strategies when asked about the road closures and police presence.

Kucuk is not critical of police, nor does he take issue with their presence. He has a good relationship with officers who police the district, as does Ronald Dangler, the owner-operator of Dobbs. But they said the slow weekend wasn’t simply a product of potential patrons going down the Shore. They largely blame the road closures they say came with no notice from police.

“This doesn’t help us out,” said Dangler, who opted to close Sunday, suspecting that he wouldn’t break even for the night. “We couldn’t prepare for this or let our customers know.”

» READ MORE: Business owners say weak enforcement is emboldening the violence on Philly’s South Street

Those who push back on a maze of road closures said they could understand if the decision came out of an abundance of caution over other crime in the city, but they simply don’t know.

Nonetheless, business owners wonder whether there’s a better way to keep patrons safe while making the most of events like Made in America, which draw thousands of visitors from out of town, and could be a boon in the summer.

Mike Harris, executive director of the South Street Headhouse District, said he makes recommendations to police using business owner feedback. He already has plans to meet with police this month to discuss the weekend, but it’s police who will have the last word on road closures and police presence — another controversial topic in the corridor.

“I have a lot of businesses who want more police and a lot of businesses who want less police, and so we try to work with the police department to find that balance,” he said.

» READ MORE: After the South Street mass shooting, residents ask police: ‘How are you going to keep me safe?’

Tattooed Mom’s Robert Perry is one of the owners taking issue with the number of police patrolling South Street. Last weekend, one of Perry’s employees took to the bar’s Twitter account to ask police about the road closures and heavy police presence, writing that they were scaring people from the neighborhood.

Perry said the Tweet might have come off as harsh of the current police approach to public safety but the point stands: Expanded road closures and increased police presence seen since the June shooting make South Street feel less welcoming and as if something bad could happen any moment. He’s not asking for no police, simply a recalibration.

“The community, residents, business owners, a coalition of people should have a say in what our community policing looks like and I feel there has been none of that really going on,” Perry said.

For now, Kucuk said he’s hoping the fall offers a business boost he desperately needs. He’s had a hard time breaking $1,000 in daily sales for more than a month. Even for a month in which people are going down the Shore, those are dismal numbers — a third of what he used to make.

“How long can I do this for without the business going down?” he said.