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Although construction on Lead and Coal avenues was completed spring of this year, store owners have yet to recover from business losses they experienced during the construction.
The city of Albuquerque began the $26 million Lead and Coal Improvement Project in October 2010. The project reduced traffic lanes from three lanes to two on both streets and included a bicycle lane with and wider sidewalks with pedestrian amenities, such as trash bins, lights and new bus stops.
The city included a business directory on the project’s website at leadandcoal.com to ensure customers were aware that the businesses were still open, and provided signage to direct customers to the stores. But some businesses, such as Stepp’n-2-Style and Saffron Café, shut down.
Shafina Ladha took over the Farm Fresh Market on Lead Avenue after the old owners left three months ago and said sales are still down.*
“They (the former owners) were only making $200 a day; you can’t survive on that,” Ladha said.
Ladha said one of the reasons her business hasn’t improved yet is that potential customers don’t realize construction has ended. She said the businesses affected by the construction weren’t promoted enough after construction ended and that she uses purchase promotions in order to attract customers who may have taken their business elsewhere.
“We offer a free 2-liter Pepsi if you spend over $30 and we are planning on putting an advertisement in the Alibi to attract customers,” Ladha said. “It’s not picking up like it should be, one day will be good and three days will be bad. People don’t come in here. They go to Smith’s or Walmart instead.”
Owner of Free Radicals clothing store Nan Morningstar said she and her husband John decided to hold on to their business through the construction and hoped business would improve. She said they’ve owned the store for 10 years and that sales are slowly returning to normal as more people realize the area has reopened.
“They’re better now, I wouldn’t say they’re back up to where they were 100 percent before the construction, but they’re working their way back up,” she said. “I think it’s just time. I think it’s just people realizing that the construction is actually finished, we’ll have a lot of customers come in and they’re surprised that the road is open, they didn’t know it was over.”
Casa de Piñatas owner Francisco Rodriguez said he’s been making piñatas at the store for the past 16 years. He said that although his sales are slowly improving, during the construction he relied almost entirely on existing customers for business.
“Business is better,” he said. “Last year it was terrible. There were no people, no traffic … you just walked in off the sidewalk, before there was no sidewalk,” he said.
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Rodriguez, who had a stroke last year, said he has to work especially hard to not get too worried about the state of his business. He said he isn’t sure if his business will ever return to normal.
“I tell people we’ll have to see how the year finishes because we spent so many months in the hole,” he said.
*In the original version of this article the shop owned by Ladha was incorrectly referred to as the Farmers Market. It also said Ladha owned the shop for only two months and that she relies on the success of the shop to support her daughter. She does not support her daughter. The error was made in reporting.
