Pryce Boeye’s Hungry Hobo sandwich shops’ sales on the Iowa side of the Mississippi River have been booming since the state reopened dining rooms in mid-June, while those he owns in still-closed Illinois languish.
The pattern is repeated across the Quad Cities, a river-straddling metro area of around 420,000 that includes Scott and Muscatine counties on the Iowa side, as well as Rock Island and Henry counties in Illinois. The contrasting state reopening policies have created two tracks in what had been a unified economy before…