GRAND RAPIDS CHARTER TOWNSHIP, Mich. — Bella Bridesmaids was given permission to reopen on Tuesday, after certain COVID-19 restrictions were lifted in the state. Now less than a week later, the store is closed again to appointments, and owner, Alexandra Pohl says it faces between $8,000 and $9,000 in dress losses alone, after Saturday's protest in Grand Rapids.
Pohl said she stands by the protest's intended message, which spoke out against police brutality on black lives.
"I 100 percent support the original message, and again, I just hope it wasn’t lost with everything that had happened," she said.
The Grand Rapids business owner was working inside Bella Bridesmaids during the start of the protest, taking place across the street in Rosa Parks Circle. She said everything seemed peaceful, and when she and her husband left to spend time up north, three hours away they had no idea what the night would hold.
"When I left, I felt very comfortable seeing the protest and where it was going, and my husband said this is West Michigan you wouldn’t expect anything like this here," Pohl said.
Saturday night she and her husband received worried calls from their friends and families, telling them businesses on Monroe Center were being vandalized and robbed. Pohl said she and her husband stayed up all night watching the news, and saw clips of Bella Bridesmaids getting hit.
"All of our windows were broken when we came in. All of our mannequins were broken or in the streets. I had a whole rack of dresses that were either stolen or damaged or out in the streets," she said, adding that the next day some protesters had returned dresses to her shop that they had saved off the streets.
Pohl said it's that kind of community support that helped her coming into the shop the next day.
"I was expecting the worst coming here, but when I actually got here I think I was just overwhelmed by the communities outreach...We had like 10 strangers in the store helping clean up dresses, cleaning up the glass, getting plywood up," she said.
Protesters from the night before came into Bella Bridesmaids to check on Pohl and apologize, something Pohl said was not their responsibility.
"It was hard because they were apologizing for how it turned out, and so you just know it wasn’t the intent, and they shouldn’t be apologizing for that," she said, adding that she believes the damage was a result of a different group taking advantage of the protest, "Some of the video footage that we're seeing too, you can tell some people weren’t there for the protest, just from the people that were stealing, and it looked liked some people were taking advantage of the situation."
Bella Bridesmaids is not currently open for appointments but is open to potential orders. Pohl said insurance will cover "a lot" of what was lost and while it will be an uphill battle, she's confident the store will make a recovery.
"It is going to be hard being closed for a little longer after COVID-19, but we’ll be okay, we’re moving forward," Pohl said.
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