NHL lockout hurting businesses near TD Garden

As the National Hockey League resumes talks regarding the lockout of its players, businesses near Boston’s TD Garden said they have suffered from a lack of preseason festivities that normally bring Bruins fans to the area’s restaurants and bars.

Many of these businesses’ owners said they are concerned about the NHL lockout as it negatively affects customer turnover.

“It affects this whole entire part of the city,” said Jim Taggart, manager at The Four’s near the TD Garden. “I think it affects every place that people would go to watch a Bruins game.”

NHL team owners entered a lockout of the National Hockey League Players’ Association members when a collective bargaining agreement expired on Sep. 15, a dispute that has eliminated all preseason games in September.

NHL owners have called for a lower share of revenue for NHL players, one of many issues still unsolved between owners and players.

This is the fourth time in 20 years players have been locked out, and preseason festivities in bars across the nation have halted as a result.

“We’ve already missed the preseason and the first games,” said Joe Gonzales, bartender at Sports Grille Boston. “We’re going to find out the 24th if this continues. Fans pay a lot for season tickets — they like to go and see hockey.”

David Perri, bartender at The Grand Canal, said he has noticed fewer patrons during the NHL lockout.

“We’re pretty much full on those nights — I don’t know how many people that would be, but probably a couple hundred anyway,” he said. “Absolutely, they won’t come because of the lockout.”

Taggart said The Four’s shows almost all NHL games on television and can get more than 1,000 patrons on nights when Bruins games are played at TD Garden.

“It’s [the lockout is] a huge problem,” he said. “In the course of a normal day here we probably have 10 or 11 employees. When there’s an event at the Garden, we probably have 50 employees. There’s a whole lot of people who are not working.”

Taggart said his employees rely on NHL games to bolster their paychecks.

“They are single mothers, they are kids paying for school — its not just people looking for spending money,” he said. “This is how they live, same at every bar and restaurant up and down the area. “

Gonzales also said his restaurant relies on NHL games as a source of business.

“Hockey is a huge sport around here, so business has had a huge shift,” he said. “We all rely on the Garden, and it’s costing us half our revenue right now.”

Perri said businesses in the area are suffering as a result of the lockout, and if it continues, it would be quite a problem.

“It affects everybody’s business down here, especially being next to the TD Garden where all hockey games go on,” he said.

Perri said fans are also unhappy with the lockout, particularly as hockey is popular in Boston.

“Every night you hear it,” he said. “Everybody is disappointed, all the hockey fans are disappointed. Hockey is a big culture around here.”

Taggart said bars and restaurants are not the only businesses to suffer as a result of the lockout.

“It affects this whole entire part of the city,” he said. “Certainly all the concession workers don’t have jobs, and for those people these are full-time jobs, so that’s 40 or 45 days that are taken out of their paycheck. The parking garage attendants, the T-shirt salesmen, the police who work overtime, it affects everybody.”