When Roosevelt Road in Lombard was under construction last year, Heritage Cadillac sales and service put on two tent sales, inviting construction workers as well as potential Cadillac buyers to have a soda.
John Pahl, general sales manager, said he told the road workers to go ahead and help themselves, but to make sure they kept his entrances clean.
”We anticipated problems, but we beefed up advertising, worked on access and had a decent year,” Pahl said.
This spring, the construction zone has moved west on Roosevelt Road to Glen Ellyn and Wheaton.
The Burger King in Glen Ellyn was doing brisk business early this spring, but once the trucks, road barricades and jackhammers showed up, people began avoiding Roosevelt Road.
”You`re supposed to be in and out of here fast,” said George Triana, the owner, who has been in that location for 11 years and who has 30 employees. ”Our business is down 20 percent. We`ve laid off a few people and cut everyone`s hours.
”We`re trying to do our best. I think we`ll make it through, but it`ll take another year after the construction is finished for business to come back.”
That mixed picture-of coping but feeling a real pinch-hits many businesses each year with the onset of the road construction season. Retail businesses like fast-food restaurants and gasoline stations that rely on heavy in-out traffic get hurt. Big-ticket businesses have a better chance of coping, but no guarantees. When your entrance is blocked, you are out of business.
This is surely the season for blocked entrances, and the threat of a strike by construction workers has merchants doubly concerned.
Two of the biggest headaches are Roosevelt Road-a major retail strip all along the construction zone-and the ultimate in high-visibility barricades-the City of Chicago`s repair of the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Chicago River north to Ohio Street, the most extensive rehabilitation since the bridge was built in 1920.
The bridge project, including the viaduct north of the bridge, will cost $25.8 million and take two years. It could have been done in a single construction season, but only if the Boul Mich had been completely blocked off. The work is far more extensive than simple repaving, involving replacing structural steel in both the bridge and viaduct. Once finished, the bridge should last at least another 20 years, city planners say.
”We have to keep the street open to have access to the hotels and businesses, so the buses can get through and so you can get a fire truck through if needed,” said Richard Hankett, a deputy commissioner of the city`s department of public works.
In order to lessen the impact on businesses, the city agreed to return Michigan Avenue to full service during the busy holiday selling season, from Thanksgiving until New Year`s. Work will be resumed after that and the project will be finished by the next holiday season in November 1992.
Managers of the Inter-Continental and Forum hotels say the city is being helpful in trying to keep open access, but acknowledge the project comes at a bad time for them, considering they just opened last year after a $134 million remodeling job.
So much for the glamor jobs. For the next five years, the Illinois Department of Transportation will be spending an average of over $1 billion a year for highway rehabilitation and construction in northeastern Illinois. That includes 82 miles of interstate rehabilitation, 289 miles of resurfacing and 78 miles of highway construction.
Merchants and communities along Roosevelt Road have had the unusual experience of being able to learn from each other and to try to anticipate trouble. About half the overall project was completed when construction was finished in Villa Park and Lombard last year, adding a middle turning lane and resurfacing the entire roadway.
The same thing is being done along a 3 1/4-mile strip from Nicoll Way in Glen Ellyn to between West Street and Carlton Avenue in Wheaton, a $7 million job.
”Eventually it will be good for business, but first you have to live through it,” said Vicki Sebela, executive director of the Wheaton Chamber of Commerce.
The Wheaton and Glen Ellyn Chambers of Commerce, figuring the experience to the east of them would prove a mirror to the problems they would encounter, set up regular meetings with merchants long before construction began this March.
Mainly they tried to keep up a flow of accurate information and provide contact numbers with the construction crews, so merchants wouldn`t feel helpless if their entrances or exits were closed, the main worry of business people.
One piece of advice that got passed on was for merchants with heavy in-out traffic to put up their own entrance signs. The construction crews provide legible entrance signs that look like street signs, rectangular in shape with white lettering on a green background. But they are small and often can be displaced by the construction work.
”I told the guys down at Ford to be sure they put up a big sign,” said Pahl of the Cadillac dealership. Packey Webb Ford in Wheaton built its own sign, a monster that gives explicit directions to a hard-to-find entrance.
But sometimes even that isn`t enough.
Ron Moyers, sales manager at Jeep/Eagle of Du Page in Wheaton, is losing footage to construction where he used to display vehicles, and has been losing business because people want to be able to take out a vehicle for a pleasant test drive.
He has increased advertising and trimmed prices, but he still blames the construction in part for the 25 to 30 percent dropoff in business this year compared to last, some of which is due to the recession. Moyers said a Jeep/
Eagle dealer in Naperville, near enough to be competition, has been able to keep sales numbers up despite the recession.
”If they would work around the clock, it would be better, but we`re in a partial residential area here and they can`t do that,” Moyers said. So far, he hasn`t had to lay off anyone at the agency, which employs six salesmen and six mechanics, and he hopes that won`t happen. The small agency tries to keep employees long-term as part of providing a high level of service.
One business that might have been severely affected but has held up is The Wheaton Inn, a luxury bed-and-breakfast inn that caters to business people looking for an elegant place to stay, and to others such as wedding parties or anniversary couples looking for something close to a vacation.
”They do sometimes ask for a room in the back away from the noise, but it hasn`t cut into business,” said Jackie Andrews, co-innkeeper with her husband, J. Ogden Andrews. Andrews said construction dust has led to more vigilance on the part of the cleaning staff, whisking away errant particles from the reproductions of Williamsburg-style antiques.
But the inn, which opened four years ago and has only the foundation and fireplace from the original home, has tightly sealed storm windows and central air conditioning, and once inside the noise and dirt from the construction seem far away. The 16 rooms have been full on weekends, and a little less than full during the week, as usual, Andrews said.
Andrews had to interrupt the interview to take a call from a nervous bride planning her wedding reception at the inn this weekend.
”It`s dirty and it creates inconvenience,” Andrews said. ”But we`re here. We can`t move. It`s a necessary thing, and when it gets done it`ll be great.”
More on the cutting edge is Barge Way gasoline, a cut-rate filling station at Roosevelt Road just west of Interstate 355.
”It`s rough to make a living today,” said Anthony Dalise, the manager, who complained he had three years of construction backups when I-355 was being built, though the completed Du Page tollway increased his business in the end. The Roosevelt Road construction started a year after I-355 was completed. Dalise took out the old entrance signs he had for the I-355 construction and put them up again.
”We`ve been here a long time and we have loyal customers, but business is down about 15 percent,” he said.
Robert Harvey, resident engineer on the project for the state transportation department, said the most frequent complaint he has had to deal with comes from motorists trying to get in and out of driveways. To get back in the two lanes of traffic, you often must accelerate quickly.
The driveways, however, are loose gravel, which slows acceleration and kicks up a wave of stones that can spray a following car.
