MOUNT VERNON — The Ohio Department of Transportation has begun construction on aprons, where driveways connect to the road, of businesses located on the east side of Ohio 13/Sandusky Street.
Food service businesses on the street think the construction is hurting sales, while others said business has largely continued unaffected.
Vehicles can still access parking lots during apron construction, but from limited entrances. Aprons include “the first 10-30(ish) feet of the driveways that gives access to the roadway,” according to public information officer for ODOT District Five Morgan Overbey.
Apron construction will be done in two phases, with drives on the east side of the road being completed during phase one and drives on the west side of the road being completed during phase two, Overbey noted.
“Phase 1 is currently in place and removal of the aprons or partial removal has taken place,” Overbey stated. “The schedule for re-installment of the aprons is fluid and dependent on many factors but the tentative schedule looks like beginning-mid September. At least one apron to every business is being maintained and access is permitted.
“It is too early to give a definite date of when phase 1 will end because there is still work to be done. But the schedule submitted by the contractor at the beginning of the project shows us switching to phase 2 late September.”
In addition to residential and commercial apron construction progressing, ODOT will be condensing some of the entrances and exits, Overbey stated.
“As far as eliminating commercial aprons, Amatos will no longer have their northern entrance, the business south of Subway will only have one entrance, the Subway entrance will be condensed to one drive centered across Belmont Avenue. We will relocate a drive for Forster Seeds of Quality, and Dollar General/BMV will no longer have their northern entrance/exit,” Overbey explained.
Erica Grigsby, managing partner at Amato’s Woodfired Pizza on the east side of Sandusky Street, said on Aug. 10 lunch sales had decreased since the construction traffic detour began.
“Our lunch has definitely taken a hit as far as sales go, because people try to get in and out at lunch time,” Grigsby said.
However, Grigsby said dinner sales have not dipped. She attributes continued business to the restaurant having been established in the Mount Vernon community for several years.
“I’m very thankful that this construction happened in year four and not year one for us,” Grigsby said.
As for the McDonald’s also located on the east side of Sandusky Street, shift manager Justin Erow said on Aug. 17 sales had decreased since the start of construction in July.
“We’ve taken a significant drop,” Erow said regarding average sales, and added that since construction began, the store rarely sees walk-in customers.
Erow said the majority of customers use the drive-thru, but those sales are also “hit or miss.”
City engineer Brian Ball said the city coordinated the timeline of the construction project with the nearby businesses.
“The main concern was Foster Supply,” Ball said. “Their busy season is in the spring, so they asked us not to start the project until they were done with their plant sale. The project start day was set based on their request.”
Fred Forster, founder of Forster Seeds of Quality located on Sandusky Street, said most of the store’s sales are done in April, May and June. Forster said if the city had not agreed to push the project start date to after the store’s busy season, he likely would have moved locations.
“A few years back when they first started talking about it, I went to a council meeting and I told them ‘hey, if you start this in April, May or June, when we do 75% of our business for the year, then we’re going to be forced to move,’” Forster said.
Forster would have moved the store to a larger city such as Mansfield, he said. Forster said in the beginning of July he believed the store’s regular customers would continue to come, but he worried about lost revenue from thru traffic.
ODOT and the company heading the construction, Eclipse Co., LLC, converted Sandusky Street to one lane on July 7 and began redirecting southbound traffic, a reroute that will be in place until the project is completed. One-way northbound SR 13/Sandusky Street traffic is continuing through the construction project.
“The biggest place that we’re going to lose business is the people that come North, from Mansfield or Cleveland,” Forster said in July. “Probably 20% of our traffic is drive by, one way or the other, that’s not from Mount Vernon.”
As of Aug. 11, Forster said the store had not seen any major dips in sales since construction began.
Aside from stores on Sandusky Street, Mount Vernon’s Bureau of Motor Vehicles is located on the west side of the street.
BMV deputy registrar Rose Medich said, as of Aug. 17, she had not noticed any changes in operations because of the construction or reroute.
“I think (business) is the same,” Medich said. “We have our natural trends anyway. People go back to school; fall slows down a bit. But I think most people in Knox County know how to get here.”
The construction detour route extends as far back as Fredericktown. Fredericktown village administrator Bruce Snell said he has not heard of any construction-related sales impacts or concerns from business owners in Fredericktown.
Construction is slated for completion in November 2021. Grigsby, managing partner at Amato’s, questioned the productivity of the project.
Grigsby said she has seen the crew end work at approximately 3 p.m. each day.
“It’d be really awesome if the state would provide ‘round the clock (work) so we could get this done in three months rather than six,” Grigsby said.
Overbey, public information officer for ODOT, stated work hours for the project are Monday through Thursday from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., with work sometimes on Friday and/or Saturday depending on rain days.
