Businesses see project as bump in road

If you stand behind the counter at La Katrina Tacos and look ahead, you can see backhoes breaking Freya Street. If you look to your left, beyond the sombrero-adorned archway, you can see them tearing up Fifth Avenue.

The $3.5 million Thor-Freya reconstruction project has begun. A week into it, business owners in the area said they have felt a loss of sales but look forward to the outcome.

The roads were marked with bumps and holes, said Sheila Mulligan, who owns Mulligan’s Marketplace, across the street from La Katrina.

“We’re really glad to get the roads fixed,” she said.

Still, the initial phase of the roadwork has slowed business at the eclectic gift store. In an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons, Mulligan is having a storewide sale.

Two streets down at Freya and Third, Lisa Snyder, owner of Hair of Coarse, has seen her walk-in and drive-by customer traffic dwindle. Those clients make up about a third of her salon business.

But Synder is grateful that she’s not in her old location, near Mulligan’s and La Katrina. In solidarity with those businesses, Snyder is allowing their customers to park in her lot.

The closing of Fifth initially backed up traffic on Thor, said Mark Roloff, whose Total Health Center grocery and cafe is on the corner of those streets. But within a few days, drivers found alternative routes, Roloff said.

It has been challenging for Roloff’s customers to get to the store, and some have had to cross traffic to reach the parking lot, he said.

But Roloff hasn’t noticed a negative effect on sales and said he focuses on what the future holds, “which is a large improvement in terms of safety and traffic flow.”

Before the work is over, sections of Thor and Freya streets will get new asphalt. Sections of Hartson, Second, Third and Fifth avenues will be removed and replaced.

The initial plan didn’t include Second and Third in the latter group, but when engineers saw cracks in the road, they petitioned for more money to entirely redo them because heavy trucks from the highway pass through that area, said project engineer Mike Cash.

This addition will delay the anticipated end date by a few weeks, to mid-July, Cash said.

Work on Thor, Second and Third – the start dates for which have not been determined – will be done in halves, with one or two lanes being worked on while the other one or two are available to through traffic.

On Tuesday, Holly Wysaske and her party of four at La Katrina were not dissuaded by the dug-up and closed-off roads.

They parked at Fred Meyer and walked a block to the Mexican restaurant.

“Nothing,” Wysaske said, “could keep us from these tacos.”