From:            Michele Manasse
To:                Commission-Public-Records
Cc:                Kathy Casey
Subject:           [EXTERNAL] small women owned business relief
Date:              Tuesday, May 12, 2020 1:06:05 PM
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Good Morning Commissioners. My name is Michele Manasse and I am the owner of
Fireworks Galleries and a member of the Small Business and Airport Action
Committee. Due to COVID our store were forced to close. Sales for the past few
months are gone forever but our expenses continue, including payroll, health
insurance, utilities and payment for merchandise that we had procured prior to
closing. We understand we can't recoup our losses but we need solutions to mitigate
them and survive.

In addition the foreseeable future, probably years, passenger projections will be far
lower than 2019 numbers which translates to fewer customers. Fireworks' rent
structure was based on these customers walking in our doors. On top of that, CDC
guidelines for spacing in our stores will mean even fewer customers.

The only fair and equitable direction for us to survive is to renegotiate our leases,
eliminate MAG and pay percentage rent only. In this scenario, when passenger levels
are higher, the Port benefits, when they are lower, we have a better chance of
surviving.

In addition, I appreciate the consideration of lease extensions to recoup our initial
capital investment. These extensions should take into consideration the time it takes
for traffic to resume to 2019 levels PLUS some additional multiple of that time to
recover from the losses.

Neither of these solutions would be a "gifting of public funds" and both of them
together would potentially save many small businesses at SeaTac.

Retaining our current rent structure and length of leases will potentially result in many
of the small businesses failing and need to be replaced with new ones, the rents paid
would be significantly lower in this market  isn't the prudent thing to work with the
existing, established entities than deal with the turmoil of turnover?

Thank you for your consideration of these solutions to keeping concessions viable.


MICHELE MANASSE, Chief Firecracker
FIREWORKS GALLERIES | 3307 Utah Ave S | Seattle WA 98134
TEL 206.682.8707 | FAX 206.467.6366 | fireworksgallery.net
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