Ilsa Matthes | Daily Press Only a few cars dotted Ludington Street in Escanaba Wednesday afternoon. Despite pushes to reopen the economy at all levels, many businesses remain shuttered due to stay-at-home orders, financial woes, and fear from both businesses and consumers that venturing too far from home could mean coming down with the coronvirus. As downtowns across the nation grapple with finding a new normal, Escanaba’s downtown is also seeking a Downtown Development Authority executive director.

ESCANABA — As many businesses along Ludington Street remain shuttered, the Escanaba Downtown Development Authority has taken a break from meeting, but who will lead as the executive director of the authority when the economy reopens is still unknown.

Former DDA Executive Director Ed Legault stepped down from the position in mid-February to take a position as the director of the Delta County Economic Development Alliance. The DDA met quickly after Legault announced his intent to vacate his DDA role, but the coronvirus and resulting shutdowns put the breaks on the search for his replacement not long after.

“For me as a DDA person, as a (hiring) committee member, I would like to be able to say, ‘Here’s what we’ve been doing and here’s the proactive measures we’ve taken and here’s the progress we’ve made, and this, and this, and that’ and really, we don’t have any of that going on,” said DDA Board Member Mark Ammel.

While the hiring committee formed by the DDA to find Legault’s replacement did meet before gathering restrictions and economic shutdowns began in mid-March, little progress was made in those early stages beyond advertising the position and opening it up to applicants.

Applications for the position have been received by the city’s human resources department and distributed to the hiring committee members, but without the ability to meet, the committee is left to review the applications individually. The committee will ultimately have to meet to go over the applications as a group, and make a recommendation to the DDA board as a whole. If approved, those candidates would then be asked to appear for interviews by the DDA.

Possible future state-mandated restrictions and the current economic crisis have further complicated filling the position. When the DDA can resume meeting, it will need to make tough choices about salary and the duties of a director when downtown events — and possibly even the city’s farmers’ market — are canceled.

“At this point it would be so hard to approach a candidate. We have no idea what we could offer. I don’t know (how) we could say, ‘Sure, you can move here but you can’t come into contact with anybody, and that’s one of your job requirements,'” said Ammel.

Besides the factors directly affecting the director’s position, members of the DDA themselves have been hard-hit by the fallout from the coronavirus. Those new challenges have shifted the focus away from finding a new DDA director.

“One of our committee members had to resign due to some family issues, and then, unfortunately, three out of the four committee members that were left were all restaurant industry. So when this shutdown, all of our focus went on to ‘OK, how do we not lose our businesses permanently?'” said Ammel.

Despite the challenges pushing the executive director’s position to the back burner, Ammel sees the DDA resuming its search after in-person meetings can resume.

“We just paused it until once restrictions are lifted and we can move more freely we’re going to delve back into the process,” he said.