By Beacon Staff
With the $21 million riverfront and downtown revitalization project starting sooner than expected – this month rather than next spring – a number of Jefferson Street business owners are concerned about how it will affect business.
They voiced those concerns during a public meeting Thursday at City Hall, addressing the architects of the project, Veenstra and Kimm. The bulk of the project will be paid for with $17.5 million from a TIGER, or Transportation Investment Generation Economic Recovery grant awarded to the city in 2018. The rest will be paid for with other grant funds and $2.7 million from the city.
“I am a proponent of this (project). I love where we are going to be when we get on the other side,” said Suann Wells, owner of The Beancounter on the 200 block of Jefferson Street. “From here to there scares the living daylights out of me.”
Portions of Jefferson Street will be blocked off for several months at a time during different phases of the construction project, two blocks at a time. Construction is set to begin Oct. 18 of this year and will stretch into 2023. The city has hired engineering consultant Veenstra and Kimm and architecture firm SmithGroup to draw up the plans for the project, with Portzen Construction tapped for the building phase.
Both lanes of Jefferson Street in a specific two-block area will be closed. There will be no parking in those blocks, and the street will be closed with fencing. Sidewalks will remain open, as will foot access to all businesses.
Veenstra and Kimm project manager Leo Foley said he is working with the city to provide as many accommodations to businesses as possible, but it will be far from a perfect situation. Nick MacGregor, assistant city manager for public works, is worried about how the project will impact the Sixth Street bridge into downtown Burlington.
Jefferson Street will be closed at the Sixth Street bridge intersection from May 30 to Oct. 7 of next year, and MacGregor would prefer to avoid closing the bridge if possible. He said the bridge is a vital transportation hub as the primary connector between downtown and the south side of Burlington.
“We have to take a look at that,” MacGregor said.
Eric Renteria, the owner of the Hallmark store on the 600 block of Jefferson Street, said the street closure from May 30 to Oct. 7 will effectively kill his business for those four months. Renteria said his business took a nosedive previously when a portion of Jefferson Street was closed in the aftermath of the Tama building fire.
“I just haven’t heard anything that helps deliver my customers to my store during this very challenging time, and I know it’s coming,” he said.
Janet Earp, owner of pride and groom on Jefferson Street and Central Avenue, will lose Jefferson Street access to her business in just a couple of days. The 800 block of Jefferson Street will be closed through the holidays starting Oct. 18, and most of Earp’s customers are elderly. Most of those customers are bringing dogs with them to get groomed, and the combination could make for a hazardous situation.
“I can’t have 80-year-old people with canes and dogs and leashes walking down here. I can’t walk a block and a half to pick up their dog,” she said.
Earp said there are five parking spots along Central Avenue that her customers can use, but those spots are shared with several other businesses. Since there are no alleyways on that end of Jefferson, she won’t have backdoor parking like those further down the street.
“I have nowhere to park. Parking is atrocious there,” she said.
Despite the improvements the project will make to Jefferson Street, Main Street, and the riverfront, the combined downtown area will be losing about 10 to 15 street parking spaces. That doesn’t sit right with Renteria, who thought the point of the grant was to facilitate transportation.
“I don’t know if I get one more customer on the other side of this, which is of great concern to me,” he said. “We haven’t done one single thing to improve the biggest problem (lack of parking) downtown Burlington has.”
To help smooth the upcoming friction with business owners and residents, the city has posted the construction plan on its website, as well as the information from Thursday’s meeting. The city will update the site weekly with the status of the project, and Veenstra and Kimm are meeting with the Greater Burlington Partnership every two weeks to update mitigation plans.
As long as business owners stay in contact with the city, Foley said the process should be as painless as possible. City manager Chad Bird said the city is already considering further mitigation for the construction, including shuttle buses and creative signage.
Bird inquired, “Instead of just putting a road closed sign at the end of the street, can that sign say, ‘Road closed, but businesses open’? And list them?”
Construction will begin this month on the west section of Jefferson between Central Street and North Eighth Street, as well as on some new boat ramps on the south side of the Burlington Memorial Auditorium. Bird said he expects construction to wrap up on both in time for winter. As far as a timeline for the rest of the project, Bird said he expects the entirety of Main Street to be completed by October 2023, all of Jefferson Street by May 2023, and the riverfront by November 2022.