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RALEIGH When it's done, the Elizabeth Avenue Business Corridor Project should make for a much better street: improved utilities and drainage, new streetlights, trolley tracks, fresh landscaping, bike lanes, the works.
The problem has been getting it done. The original deadline was April 23. It's been pushed back to Sept. 30. The business owners along the street – especially those between Travis Avenue and Hawthorne Lane, the last leg, where crews are working now – are trying to endure a season of noise, dust and lost business.
“I honestly feel that we're all feeling pretty defeated at this point,” said Bonnie Warford, co-owner of Carpe Diem Restaurant and Caterers, which opened at Elizabeth and Travis in 2003. “We're all just looking forward to it being done.”
Warford said she can't quantify how much business she's lost just from construction, but it's been “significant.” “We've had wedding receptions and business parties cancelled,” she said. “We've had a lot of people tell us, ‘We don't want to come because it's just a mess.'”
The $14.5 million project, part of a larger redevelopment plan for the area, began in December 2007 at Kings Drive. The idea was to expand and improve the street for future development and a planned trolley running from Beatties Ford Road through uptown and the Elizabeth neighborhood to Eastland Mall.
But contractors hit a major, unforeseen problem in the project's second phase, between Charlottetown Avenue and Travis. The soil beneath the roadbed wasn't dense enough to support the new street and had to be replaced, said Jim Banbury, spokesman for the city's engineering and property management department.
The soil problem was the primary reason for the delay, which extended beyond even the 50- and 26-day extensions the city granted to the contractor, United Construction Co. of Charlotte. After Sept. 30, city and United Construction officials will discuss the possibility of the company paying damages for the missed deadlines, Banbury said.
“We understand it's an inconvenience” for business owners, he said. “But our main concern is getting the project completed.”
United Construction expects to argue to the city that it had no way of knowing about the soil problem, said Dieter Crago, the company's vice president and general manager. “A lot of this has been out of our control,” Crago said. “I hope they'd be willing to sit down with us and make this a win-win for all of us.”
The good news, he said, is that the third, Travis-to-Hawthorne, phase is scooting along on schedule, and that United might finish the work before Sept. 30. It's a short leg of the street that takes Elizabeth to the doorstep of Presbyterian Hospital, where it ends. A string of restaurants and shops lines the northeast side of the street; since late June, when the third phase began, people have had to navigate orange-and-white plastic barricades and netting to get there, crossing on a walkway at the Travis end of the block. Parking is an even bigger pain.
On a recent hot weekday afternoon, Jocelyn Mahon and LaTonya Boston, who work at Presbyterian, decided to walk down Elizabeth for lunch, as they often do. Their first choice was NOFO on Liz, a store and café at 1609 Elizabeth.
But it had closed for lunch because of its new “summer construction hours,” as the sign at the door said. They couldn't find anything else on the block and ended up at Elizabeth Creamery down the street. “We decided to have ice cream for lunch,” Mahon said.
They were the only customers in the place. “It's frustrating, because it's inconvenient,” Mahon said. “You want to come to a place you want to come to, and you can't.”
“They need to hurry up,” said Boston.
The restaurants on the block count on a steady lunch crowd of Presbyterian employees and students from nearby Central Piedmont Community College. That's withered since June.
“We've been cutting back and cutting back and cutting back, just to try to stay ahead of it,” said Brandon Hilliard, who manages NOFO on Liz. “People don't want to walk down the street in dust when they're wearing business attire. It's sad, because if they don't get done quickly, we could potentially close until it's done. It's crazy. But what do you do?”
Hilliard estimates business is down to half of what it was preconstruction, although he concedes the economy and traditionally slow summer season may be contributing, too. “We're just trying to hang on,” he said. “I'm hoping we have jobs in a month.”
Up the street, a Nothing But Noodles restaurant opened in November. Its owners expected construction to be done by now. General manager Micah Javier said contractors have moved quickly on this phase, but the restaurant, made to order for a lunch crowd, is struggling.
“We'll be able to survive,” he said as a lonely pair of customers ate their noodles in a corner booth. “But business is definitely not where we thought it'd be.”
But businesspeople agreed that they've been pleased with the speed of work on the last phase and said the city and United Construction have kept them informed lately about their progress. Recently, the city sent an e-mail to business owners saying the trolley tracks were finished, and that retaining wall, sidewalk, conduit and curb work is expected to be done in the next week or so.
In March, Warford helped arrange a meeting among business owners and city officials, including City Councilwoman Patsy Kinsey, whose District 1 includes Elizabeth. Kinsey lives on Greenway Avenue, about six blocks away on the other side of Presbyterian.
“So I'm over there all the time,” she said. “It's a pain right now, and I understand that, having had construction on my street. But we're close now to it being over. And once it's finished, it's finished. We won't have to go back and re-do storm water or the tracks. We decided just to get it all done at one time.”
Her advice for businesspeople on the street is simple: “Hang in there. It's bad now, but it's gonna be great,” Kinsey said. “I think they know that. We don't want to lose any of them, not a single one.”
