Businesses along Argyle Street in downtown Halifax are raising concerns about construction just ahead of the busy summer season and the impact it will have on foot traffic in the area.
For one business owner, it feels eerily similar to what happened in 2017.
“Yeah, 2017 was disastrous,” said Philip Holmans, the owner of World Tea Shop.
“We went down 75 per cent in income, almost lost the business. We had to take out loans for rent, laid off most of my staff.”
He says it’s been “jarring” seeing construction crews back outside his store, and that he didn’t even realize the scope of the project until he saw fences erected and crews out to replace pipes for the drain system in the road.
“I figured it was just going in with a snake or something to fix the drains. I didn’t realize that it was a replacement. It’s a little disconcerting, because the project is only nine years old,” he said.
The original trench drain was put in as part of the Argyle and Grafton Shared Streetscape Project in 2017 and had an estimated 25-year lifespan.
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A spokesperson for the Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) said the drain has “reached the end of its functional lifespan.” Construction began on April 29 and is expected to take four to five weeks, depending on the weather.
Laura Wright, a senior public affairs adviser with HRM, says the municipality aims to have the project be as minimally invasive as possible.
“It’s important to note that access to businesses and patios is being maintained throughout the project and there is some temporary fencing in place to differentiate the work zone with the pedestrian area for public safety reasons,” said Wright.
However, less than a week into the construction, Holmans says he’s already seen an impact on his business.
“When they were jackhammering on Thursday, I noticed a lot of people just like walked away. Like literally walked out of my store because it was so noisy in here,” he said.
A few doors down, at the Stubborn Goat Gastropub, bar manager Matthew Relf is a bit more optimistic but says the work is cutting into the restaurant’s patio season.
“We still want to offer a good experience for our guests. So … if they want to get a bit of sun, we’ll have to wait for that, but we’ll still be able to do our thing,” he said.
Meanwhile, Holmans says this work is bringing back bad memories of the 2017 streetscape project, which was marred by a delay. He says he would have liked clearer communication from the municipality over the scale of this project.
Paul MacKinnon, CEO of the Downtown Halifax Business Commission, agrees communication is vital.
“You can never overcommunicate with businesses. Businesses like certainty. If they know that something’s happening like construction, they can plan for it, they can staff for it. But if it catches them off guard or by surprise, that’s not good for anybody,” he said.
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