Business owners air complaints about construction
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Wade Walker of Walker Motors speaks out Wednesday during a special meeting of the Montpelier City Council called to hear complaints regarding road work on River Street. Walker said he is losing $30,000 a month due to construction of the new rotary directly in front of his dealership. Stefan Hard/Times Argus |
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BY Louis Porter Vermont Press Bureau - Published: July 2, 2009
MONTPELIER – They were polite and restrained, but there was no mistaking the fact they were also angry.
One by one the owners of businesses stood up Tuesday to tell members of the Montpelier City Council what traffic from local and state highway projects had done to their businesses, their customers and their employees.
"We are at ground zero," Wade Walker, who owns Walker Motors located at the center of a city construction project.
"I am losing, because of this roundabout, $30,000 a month."
He has also had to layoff several employees, he said, because customers – as many as four a day – are calling him to say they would like to bring their cars in for service but they just can't wait through the traffic.
A state repaving project on Route 2 and the roundabout being built by the city has resulted in traffic delays of an hour or more in some cases, business owners said. Employees get to work late, while customers don't come at all.
Montpelier Mayor Mary Hooper apologized.
"I really regret that we all need to be here to have this conversation, that we can't have made this work better for everyone," she said. "My apologies to everyone for what you have had to deal with."
But for businesses that – according to their managers and owners – could face going under if the construction delays are as bad as they were Tuesday, the apology did not help as much as fewer delays would. The prospect of that is unclear.
Members of the council, in an informal vote, agreed to get details of how much it would cost to move the road construction projects from daytime work to nighttime work, and will discusss that idea next week.
However, that would likely inconvenience some residents, even if it aided businesses. During the night work that has already been done – about nine days so far, Reuben Sherman said he got little sleep and even less work done.
"After three days without sleep, we lose the ability to write," he said. "One time I even fell asleep standing up at work."
While night work might help some, neither the state nor the city had easy answers to the problem.
The combination of state paving, sidewalk, drainage and guard rail construction and the city construction of the roundabout means more than a mile of work taking place at times – and as much traffic as there is on Route 2 and Route 302, delays and long lines of cars occur, particularly when there is work during the day.
Hooper said that originally the city had thought the state might reimburse business owners for lost customers. That is not the case, said John Zicconi, an agency spokesman.
"Construction is disruptive," he said. "That kind of loss is not compensable."
Partly because the project is being paid for with federal money, he said. In fact, it is economic stimulus money that is funding the state side of the operation – something that caused an eye roll or two by the near-by business owners who attended the meeting.
"It's been a tough summer. It has been a tough couple of years," said Jim Kurrle of Kurrle fuels, located near the construction site. He is selling half as many gallons of fuel as he had been, Kurrle said.
"It's a terribly, terribly thought-out plan," Burt Spooner III of Harvest Equipment said.
One of the owners recently headed from the store on Route 302 to the Interstate. It took 45 minutes, Spooner said.
"In that amount of time he could have taken Route 2 to New Hampshire," he added.
"My employees are late every day. I am not going to penalize them, I can't expect them to leave home an hour early every day," said Jim Ackerman of Riverside Tractor and Equipment.
Business owners and customers will get a reprieve. Construction is slated to stop at midday today and remain shut down until Monday.
Then, on Wednesday, the Montpelier City Council will consider whether to move as much of the construction as possible to nighttime work.
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