Berkley businesses stuck in the dark with power outages from Thursday storms

BERKLEY, Mich. (FOX 2) - Berkley was one of the storm's hardest hit areas as homeowners not only felt the blow of those storms - but so did some businesses.

Timothy Barnes, the owner of Gate Keeper Games knows the challenge all too well.

"Unfortunately, I don’t know when the power is coming back up and Friday's our biggest day," said Barnes. "So, we’re going to take a big hit if we can’t get somewhat open."

Typically, Gate Keeper Games in downtown Berkley on 12 Mile is packed on a Friday night.

"There’s a bar, and an entertainment space where we do like tournaments for games. bands play," he said.

But on this Friday night, the seats are empty and the beer glasses, dry.

Barnes says the storms this week were so intense it knocked their power out. They have been closed Thursday and Friday.

"We got employees that can’t come in," he said. "They can’t earn money. So even just a couple days like this you know our margins are just like a restaurant, very thin because of the bar. it’s going to be bad."

So bad he says they'll lose at least $2,000 on Friday night alone.

"So not making it won’t be a matter of, you know, 5 or 10 percent on the week or even month - it’s going to be a good slice, 20 percent, 30 percent possibly on the week, easy," he said.

Gate Keeper Games wasn't the only business on the block impacted by the storms.

Amy Chinoski is a stylist at Step Up Salon.

"We had to close yesterday because we didn’t have any power," she said. "A lot of our stylists had to reschedule their appointments."

Chinoski says she doesn't know how much of a financial hit they took at the salon, but they had to close shop on Thursday.

"You can’t use your hairdryer, really anything that requires electricity," she said.

She says power was restored late Thursday night.  So, Friday they were good to go.

But not all businesses were so lucky.

"I know there’s a lot of places that are still out of power, so I feel bad for them," she said. "But I know like next door we have Amici’s Pizza, and they had to run a generator to keep their food going so it wouldn’t spoil or get bad."

Related: Insurance agent has advice for those suffering storm damage

Barnes at Gate Keeper Games says they may have to throw out food, too, and beer if it is old.

But for now, he's just hoping to have power restored soon so he can welcome customers once again.

"I’ve been here all day talking to people, hanging out in the heat. again, staying positive," he said. "The lights will come on at some point. this too shall pass."

FOX 2 drove through downtown Royal Oak and Birmingham and all the businesses there were up and running, while a large part of downtown Berkley is still recovering.

We also saw DTE Energy crews everywhere, working to restore power.

Check the DTE Outage Map HERE.