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Along Lexington Avenue near the city line between Arden Hills and Shaw Review, store, restaurant and business owners did everything they could to survive the pandemic.
Some took out loans. Some people are cutting back on staff. And businesses that could lean toward online sales did so. But just as life was returning to some semblance of normalcy in 2022, Ramsey County began its two-year road construction project along a busy commercial corridor that could prove fatal to some businesses. dealt a blow.
Allie Temperis, the third-generation owner of the store, which opened in 1985, said the four-lane highway was sometimes congested and reduced to one lane, making it difficult for customers to get to Lexington Floral. .
For flower shops that notified customers of detours, customers accounted for about 70% of their revenue, Temperis said. However, once the project is migrated, these alternative routes are no longer accessible. Temperis plans to close its stores by the fall of 2022. Construction wasn’t the only reason her family-owned store closed, but “it was like a nail in the coffin,” she said.
Unfortunately for the corridor, road construction has exacerbated the pandemic, an unavoidable fact in weather-ravaged Minnesota.
Lexington Floral wasn’t alone. Big O Tire, Arby’s, T-Mobile and Pure Barre chain stores were also closed during construction.
“We were struggling and it seemed like we were finally coming out of the impact that COVID had on our business, and then construction started,” Temperis said. “It was clear from the numbers how much of an impact that construction had on our business.”
In a report published last year by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) that analyzed projects from 2007 to 2018, researchers found that while dollar figures were not provided, companies’ sales and employment associated with long construction periods were It was determined that there would be a negative impact on The researchers suggest that regional planners should especially consider the “potential externalities” of building nearby small business facilities.
Ramsey County officials said they have contacted and met with business owners several times in 2022 and 2023 to inform them of construction plans, closures, detours and other impacts.
Julie Gronquist, owner of the Balance for Life fitness and wellness center on Lexington Street and a member of the Arden Hills Economic Development Committee, said the disruption was noticeable despite her best efforts.
“Lexington Avenue is the main artery through Arden Hills and the city of Shaw Review, so businesses on this street thrive on transit,” she says. “We’ve seen so many stores struggling because patrons are avoiding construction, which means they’re not patronizing the stores.”
Temperis said she sought relief funds and was offered recycling grants by city officials, but to no avail.
construction delay
County and city officials are looking to improve traffic flow and safety along a major commercial corridor that includes the headquarters of food cooperative Land O’Lakes Inc. and a large campus for medical technology company Boston Scientific. He said a reconstruction project was needed.
Business growth in the area has created more jobs and transportation needs. To meet that demand and anticipated pressures from new high-density housing development, “the road required major renovations,” Arden Hills and Shaw Review city officials said in an e-mail to the Star Tribune. stated in an email.
Arden Hills, Shaw Review, MnDOT and Canadian Pacific Railway have partnered on a $12.5 million project to replace aging and deteriorating pavement and traffic lights. Local utilities such as water, sewer, storm sewer, and water treatment have been upgraded.
The construction period was expected to be one year. But when crews began work in spring 2022, they discovered that ground utilities, including natural gas, electricity, and a small number of fiber-optic lines, had been incorrectly mapped. This ultimately delayed the project by more than six months.
A Ramsey County spokesperson said, “The county recognizes the frustration of hearing about long projects and understands that frustration when multiple unforeseen circumstances add time to a project.” ration will increase.”
“It was a nightmare.”
The Twin Cities North Chamber has launched “Welcome Back to Lexington Avenue,” a marketing campaign and website aimed at bringing customers to local businesses. The campaign ran from January 2023 to September 2023 and was funded by a $25,000 grant from Ramsey County through the Critical Corridors Initiative.
“We’re trying to not only bring people back to that corridor, but also bring people back to that corridor, including people who are new to that community, because there’s a lot of multifamily housing in that area. “We felt we needed to gradually stimulate demand for this,” said John Connelly, president of the Twin Cities North Chamber of Commerce.
Connelly said there are about 80 businesses along Lexington Avenue that were affected.
Ron George, third-generation owner of George’s Shoes & Repair, has operated his business on Lexington Avenue in Arden Hills for 20 years. This repair shop was founded in 1905 by George’s grandfather, who immigrated to Minnesota from Lebanon.
The company had survived the Great Depression in the late 2000s, and was now trying to overcome the third major event, the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). During the pandemic, George said he had to “tighten his belt” to keep his repair shop afloat. He cut costs, but also grew other forms of revenue, such as a mail-in repair program where people send shoes to stores.
George said the store’s sales have increased as the pandemic subsides, in part because other repair shops in the area have closed. The effort to emerge from the coronavirus “seemed never-ending,” he said. And road construction.
George’s Shoes is located in Shannon Square Shoppes, a small mall on Lexington Avenue that also includes Cub Foods, Caribou Coffee, and Subway. Once construction began, traffic to the repair shop plummeted again, forcing George to reduce store and employee hours. The customer said he plans to avoid the area until construction is complete.
“It was a nightmare,” he said.
Even those who managed to stay open during the chaos, like Lifelong Wealth Advisors, were feeling the strain. The financial services firm had moved from downtown Minneapolis to Lexington Avenue to escape construction, traffic and customer parking issues during the coronavirus crisis. The owners advertised the move to customers and promised easy access. But construction in Lexington delayed clients’ arrival, making already delicate personal finance meetings stressful, said Robert Bonin, a partner at the firm.
waiting for comeback
Temperis secretly put his store up for sale. Once her deal closed, she set her May 2023 closing date for the sale. By June she had completed the sale of her real estate to a dental clinic.
Although it was too late to stop by the flowers, Tempelis hopes local businesses will find a home on Lexington Avenue now that construction is complete.
For George, staying in business is an uphill battle to climb out of the hole created by four years of setbacks.
“We still hope to get through this,” he said. “We hope 2024 will be the year of our big comeback.”
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