27.0°F  Website Login | WarrenSeptember 1, 2010Construction means woes for Nine Mile businesses
By Brian Louwers
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Photo by Brian C. Louwers |
WARREN — Anyone looking to eat at the South Side Grill was in luck last week. The restaurant was cool and quiet, and there were plenty of seats to be found.
But business owners on Nine Mile between Ryan and Dequindre said they haven’t been lucky at all this summer. Ongoing work to completely rebuild the stretch of road, which on more than one occasion restricted travel through the area to one-way traffic only, has left them hurting.
What’s more is that this year’s construction comes after the replacement of a water line that, to a lesser extent, snarled the corridor in 2009.
“Look at us. They’re killing us, again this year,” said Deborah McNeill, 58, of Lapeer, a server at the South Side Grill. McNeill estimated that the restaurant had lost about half its business, and thus she lost a large part of her income, with fewer customers stopping in to eat during construction. “It’s probably about 50 percent, 60 percent, easy,” she added.
Her co-worker, Eva Harpster, 50, of Warren, said the loss could amount to even more than that.
“Even our Sundays aren’t what they used to be,” Harpster said as she stocked condiments, cleaned tables, and neatly arranged place settings for a dinner rush that might not come. “My bill collectors don’t understand that we don’t make money like we used to at work.”
And it’s not just slow at dinnertime. Breakfast, and most significantly lunch hour, has been hit just as bad at the South Side.
“When it’s one-way, customers don’t come in for carry outs. We don’t see them, customers that you see every day,” said restaurant manager Alex Pozios, 44, of St. Clair Shores. “The mornings aren’t as bad. The people who work here for lunch, huge. They are the ones who need to get in and out the quickest.”
Across the street at Charle’s Market, on the opposite corner of Nine Mile and Warner, Tom Elyas stood in the doorway with a few customers, looking at the construction outside of what has been his family’s business since 1971.
“They said it was all going to be normal business access. They’ve got one-ways going. I’ve already lost 50 percent of my business, bro,” Elyas said. “We’re dying, man.”
With the road down to one lane in each direction or restricted to one-way traffic during construction this year, Elyas said he’d lost business not only from the neighborhood, but also from those passing by who might otherwise stop in to grab a pop, a pack of cigarettes, a gallon of milk or a cold beer.
He said he’d probably lost $40,000 already, yet he seemed cautiously optimistic. What else can he do?
“They aren’t stopping, no way,” Elyas said. “I hope we’ll recover from it. I hope it brings more traffic down the road.”
Todd Schaedig, Warren’s acting city engineer, said the target completion date for the project is Nov. 14 — that’s for all work, including grass restoration — but that the date of substantial completion remains Oct. 1, meaning that all four lanes of traffic would be reopened by that time.
Warren Mayor Jim Fouts said he understood the concerns of business owners, but the project needed to be seen through to completion, given the scope of work in place under the contract.
Fouts added that the impact could have been minimized if a center lane existed on Nine Mile, something he said the City Council —which at the time included himself — decided against years ago at the behest of a group of residents.
“I’m obviously not happy, but it’s a situation — if we had a center lane, we could have two-way traffic,” Fouts said. “I’m concerned about it. I’m not happy. I’m very empathetic and sympathetic with the businessmen down there, but we’re just going to have to put up with it because of the existing contract,” Fouts said.
Once the project wraps up, those left working on Nine Mile know there’ll be plenty to do before business returns to normal.
“Then it’s just a question of getting everybody back once it’s done,” Pozios said. “And it is two summers in a row.”
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