By Simon Hopkins
Businesses along Richmond Road knew service would be disrupted when light rail transit construction started. But changed deadlines and poor signage has led to even more negative results.
While much of the underground tunnel work is near complete, attention has turned above ground where the street is being put back together. It will start with utility work and end with a new Byron linear park.
Maggie Freitas of Maggie’s Flowers said she’s lost all the spontaneous customers who enter her shop as they pass by. She is one of about a dozen business owners in a small strip mall at Richmond Road near Woodroffe who have complained about a hidden view and poor access points to enter.
“Since July 22, it’s been a horrible nightmare,” said Freitas. “People get lost, they don’t know where to turn, the signs are a disaster, and there’s been a couple of accidents.”
Alaa Kiki runs a barbershop next door, and he fears the construction may run his shop into the ground.
“When they came to start the construction, I lost 60 to 80 per cent [of customers] from my business,” Kiki told KT. It’s a particularly tough pill for him to swallow as a new business owner. “I got my own [shop] five or six months ago in this area,” he said.
Kiki had a barbershop in Syria before war forced him to leave with his family. They spent a few years in Jordan before coming to Canada just before the pandemic. He worked at a barber shop in Nepean before setting up one of his own.
The first-time barbershop owner said he had no idea the construction was coming when he signed his lease earlier this year. The shop only gets about four customers a day — not enough to cover the costs.
“I had to borrow money to start my business, and now I have to pay it back,” he said. “A couple months more, if it stays like this, I’m going to shut down.”
Kiki is not alone in his frustrations. Gillian Danby, owner of Lorenzo Bar and Grill located next door, told various media outlets the restaurant won’t survive another year under these conditions with business down about 80 per cent.
Under the municipal act, cities cannot give financial incentives to businesses such as a tax break due to construction setbacks. But what could be offered was a one-time payment for advertising, which Kiki said was $3,000. That would cover about one round of flyers through the mail.
“[We need] some kind of help from the city, some kind of help from the [construction] company, from the landlord – if they support us, we will stay in business,” said Kiki.
Bay ward Coun. Theresa Kavanagh said the city’s hands are tied in terms of what they can offer, and said if a change was to come, it would have to be city-wide and directed by the province.
“If we create policies for issues like this it needs to be across the board. What would we have done for Elgin and Rideau streets? It would require a lot of thought. There are all kinds of businesses. The question is how we’d make it fair. It’s not as simple as it sounds,” said Kavanagh. “In this case they are all on leases and not building owners, so a tax break would go to the property owner and not to them.”
There have also been concerns over a lack of signage. Both Kiki and Freitas don’t feel enough has been done to indicate where the entrance to their parking lot is, and are angry that their business signs are no longer visible to passing motorists.
“They want to put up [advertising] signs around, but the city is going to charge them,” Freitas said. “They put up big ‘local traffic only’ signs, so when [people] drive by and see that, they go a different direction.”
Those frustrations were shared by Kavanagh who said a solution has not been as forthcoming as she hoped. Part of the reason for the disruption was the sudden change to move the work up so it would be completed quicker.
Kavanagh’s message to business owners: the construction won’t last forever.
“The construction is necessary and it will make the street better. It means wider sidewalks, cycle laines and a new street,” she said. “I know it’s hard, but it will go on for another year. The work will no longer last until 2027.”
That offered little reassurance to the business owners.
“When the LRT goes underground, it won’t be of benefit to any of us,” said Freitas. “When you’re in the car or the bus, you get to see everything around you. But under the ground, you see nothing.”