After months of construction work on a city utility project, traffic and business are flowing again at Ninth and Massachusetts.
Traffic is flowing through downtown again, and merchants around Ninth and Massachusetts couldn't be happier.
"We're thrilled to have them back," Joe Flannery, president of Weaver's Department Store Inc., 901 Mass., said of the customers now returning to downtown. "Normal is good."
For four and a half months, portions of Ninth Street near downtown were closed while construction crews dug up the street to replace sanitary sewer, stormwater and water lines. That included nearly two months, from early July through the end of August, when the intersection at Ninth and Massachusetts was closed.
Merchants in the area had been told in early July that the project would take about three to four weeks. But by early August, the project still was not finished, and city officials said it would take until the end of August before the intersection would be reopened.
That prompted complaints from several merchants in the area, because it meant the heart of downtown would be blocked to traffic at a critical time, when thousands of college students began returning to campus.
In response, the contractor on the project, Windenmann-Godfrey Construction of Belton, Mo., agreed in early August to work crews on Saturdays in hopes of speeding the project's completion.
The Ninth and Massachusetts intersection was opened Aug. 25 to northbound and southbound traffic on Massachusetts. It closed again Monday for repaving of Ninth Street, before reopening again midmorning Wednesday.
"We knew it was a huge project," Flannery said. "But they really did a great job. The city and the contractors, they all did a great job."
Around the corner at Wheatfield's Bakery and Cafe, Ninth and Vermont, general manager Don Fortel was equally glad to see the street open again.
Wheatfield's and other businesses between Vermont and Massachusetts were hit especially hard because their section of Ninth Street had been closed since mid-April.
"It looks, at this point, like we lost tens of thousands of dollars," Fortel said. "They had put up a chain-link fence (at Ninth and Vermont) so it looked like we were at the end of a dead-end street."
None of the businesses downtown was forced to close during construction because fenced-off pedestrian walkways, along with a footbridge over an open trench, allowed access to all the shops.
But several shop owners, especially those behind the fences, said they lost a large part of their summer business. From a distance it appeared they were either closed or blocked by the construction.
Matt Fisher, manager of Third Planet on the northeast corner of Ninth and Massachusetts, said that affected his store's business to a degree.
"They had it set up so all the foot traffic that could pass through passed on the other side of the street," he said.
But now that the intersection is open again, Fisher said business has returned to normal.
"It's opened things up quite a bit," he said. "We're getting a lot more foot traffic now."
-- Peter Hancock's phone message number is 832-7144. His e-mail address is phancock@ljworld.com.
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