EVERETT — Hotel rooms are spruced up and ready for visitors. Signs welcoming sailors are appearing on reader boards. Cold beer is on tap.

With the economy sagging, local businesses are eagerly anticipating the return of the USS Abraham Lincoln.

The aircraft carrier and its two companion ships are scheduled to bring around 3,500 sailors home to Everett on Sunday.

For seven months, the sailors have been eating from the ship’s cafeteria, sleeping on narrow bunks, mostly away from driving, alcohol and many of life’s little pleasures.

“Businesses that are hurting now have another 3,000 potential customers that are going to come in,” said Doug Roulstone of Snohomish, who retired in 1999 as captain of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis. “It’s like suddenly moving 3,000 people into your city. They all have paychecks — and so that should have a positive economic boost to the economy.”

Enlisted sailors earn between $1,200 and $2,200 a month during their first four years of service. Officers with similar service earn between $2,000 and $6,300, according to the Navy. Those figures don’t include housing allowances that many sailors receive.

During most of this deployment, sailors on the Lincoln earned money tax-free because they were supporting war efforts.

The Lincoln and the smaller Everett-based vessels that make up its strike group — guided-missile destroyers USS Momsen and USS Shoup — helped wage war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The ships also made brief visits to ports in Singapore, Brunei, Bahrain, Thailand, Australia, Palau, Saipan, Cyprus and Oman.

When the sailors stride onto the dock Sunday, many will return to the naval station’s parking lot and try to start the cars they left there seven months ago. Volunteers from the Navy Exchange store in Smokey Point will roam the parking lot with jumper cables to help sailors with their cars, said Naval Station Everett spokesman Richard Huling.

“There will probably be auto repair shops that will get some business,” he said. “I’d think also restaurants would experience an increase in business as well because you’ve got people who’ve spent all that time waiting on the ship, and that gets kind of boring — even though food on ships is much better than it used to be.”

At the Everett Mall, many stores are gearing up for the sailors’ return with window signs. The mall reader board along I-5 also welcomes the Lincoln Strike Group.

Business always goes up when sailors return, general manager Linda Johannes said.

“It’s like a city returning, and so there isn’t an area of Everett that isn’t affected,” she said. “Usually what the sailors want is they want food, and they want to check out the newest music, and they want to look at girls — and they want normalcy, so that’s what we give them.”

Roulstone spent 27 years in the Navy, and he remembers being at sea, looking forward to seeing his family, grilling steak on the barbecue and fixing things around the house that broke in his absence. He expects Home Depot and other home repair shops, restaurants, car dealerships, pubs, movie theaters and airlines to benefit from the sailors’ return.

“A lot of them have been saving money while they’ve been gone,” said Roulstone, past president of the Everett Navy League. “They’ve got cash to spend and they want to buy things.”

At Scuttlebutt Brewing Co. at the Everett marina, framed photos of aircraft carriers line the walls. Whenever the Lincoln goes out to sea, business drops, and co-owner Phil Bannan is eager to have the aircraft carrier home again.

“The Navy has always been good to us,” he said. “When it’s back, we see more uniforms.”

By Friday morning, all 29 rooms at the Travelodge in downtown Everett had been reserved for Sunday. With families of sailors flocking to Everett from all over, the motel also had more guests than usual on Friday and Saturday, owner Chris Tudor said.

His crew has been busy painting and sprucing up rooms that, with the sluggish economy, have been unusually empty.

Johannes said she can’t quantify how much local businesses will benefit from the Lincoln’s return — and she doesn’t want to.

“Ship homecomings we don’t equate with an economic impact,” she said. “Yes, it’s there. You’re not going to ignore the elephant in the closet, but it’s about our sailors coming home and it’s about them seeing their wives, their kids, their moms, their dads and being part of that happy event. It’s always there. Yes, it’s going to have an economic impact, but it’s a celebration that our sailors are home safe and sound.

“That’s what we smile about.”

Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.