Eighth Street construction latest blow to merchants
City officials say 12-week job is required immediately to replace old water mains
Vince Barilla is worried a major construction project on one of Saskatoon’s busiest streets will damage his and other local businesses at a time when they can least afford it.
“It’s just one thing after another,” the longtime Broadway Roastery co-owner said of the city’s plan to spend 12 weeks replacing water mains under Eighth Street beginning next month.
“We’re trying to rebound from COVID-19 and now, just as things are about to slightly start opening back, the city decides to deal us another blow,” said Barilla, whose Eighth Street location just reopened.
Like Barilla, Churchill’s British Imports owner Tony Badger has watched revenues dwindle since the pandemic reached Saskatchewan two months ago.
Although his shop is just outside the work area — the eastbound lanes from Sommerfeld Avenue to Arlington Avenue — Badger said the road closures will be “hard to take” for many businesses.
“For us, it remains to be seen what sort of an impact it will have. I know having more barriers to accessing where you want to go, it’s easier for perhaps a lot of people … to just bypass it,” he said.
The City of Saskatoon is aware the project will be inconvenient for businesses, but its director of construction and design characterized it as a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.
“Some of the water mains on Eighth Street are in very, very bad condition. They’ve experienced numerous water main breaks over the last several winters,” Matt Jurkiewicz said. “We need to get in there and replace those before we have a massive failure that causes (a) water outage for a substantial period of time.”
Construction notices that went out this week had owners like Barilla and Badger ringing alarm bells, but city hall contends the people and businesses affected have been in the loop since January.
Jurkiewicz said notifications went out early this year, and poorly-attended information sessions were held in February. Barilla noted that a lot has changed since February, however.
While the city is working to ensure access to businesses via side streets, Barilla said access to his drive-thru, the current main point of contact for customers, will be cut off.
“We know (long construction projects) change the trend of people’s buying habits,” he said, pointing to his experience in 2016 when Broadway Avenue was shut down for a major revitalization project.
“They could not have planned this at a worse time,” he added.
Badger offered a similar assessment, saying potential customers might keep on driving rather than go out of their way to reach a particular local business.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned during this, it’s that we can do without certain things, can’t we?”
Greater Saskatoon Chamber of Commerce interim chief executive Silvia Martini described the situation as a “wicked problem,” because the work needs to be done and will likely hurt businesses.
“No matter which way you look at it, you can’t find a good solution,” she said, adding that one thing businesses can do is develop strategies to ensure their customers know they are open.
Jurkiewicz acknowledged that people are “on edge,” but noted the city is going “above and beyond” in its efforts to make the project’s three phases as manageable as possible. That includes custom signage indicating that businesses are open and accessible, as well as performance incentives and penalties in the construction contract issued last week.
The work is expected to happen in three phases, meaning the entire stretch does not need to be closed down and traffic diverted to the westbound lanes at the same time.
Badger suggested the project could be deferred for a year, giving businesses whose revenue streams have evaporated over the last two months time to recover.
Asked about the possibility of deferral — city council greenlit the 2020 construction plan last month — Jurkiewicz said everyone involved in planning it emphasized its critical nature.
“We looked at all the different risks and benefits and concerns associated with it, and just kept coming back to the fact that if we can’t do this, we could be in a situation where these businesses reopen, and we could have a larger failure … and they can’t open at all.”