By TYLER SCHNEIDER
Lansing’s small businesses on Michigan Avenue were just beginning to recover from the pandemic when Lansing’s $14 million Michigan Avenue rehabilitation project began last April.
The city closed sections incrementally as crews worked their way westward to repave and reconfigure it from five lanes to four. The project also includes sidewalk expansion, new bike lanes, updated traffic signals and water main and utility upgrades.
For mom-and-pop business owners, like Jerusalem Bakery’s Reem Hanna, it’s been hard to adapt to less traffic. The half-completed project — virtually finished from Mifflin to Horton streets — has resulted in almost a 50% loss in business, she said. And their damage is only collateral so far: Construction comes to their stretch next spring.
“After 20 years in business, construction has made things very bad for us. We have to do something about it,” Hanna said.
Except for some baking help, Hanna said she and her husband, Mike Zeineh, have been keeping their restaurant afloat by themselves since they opened at 1456 E. Michigan Ave. in 2005.
“They’d been talking about it for a couple of years before it started, but I never thought it was going to hit us that bad,” Hanna said. “I thought that they were going to have a better way for people to come through here — not close it all the way and have people ignore and avoid Michigan Avenue. They put a couple of signs on Saginaw and Kalamazoo, but I don’t think that’s helped a lot.”
“I’m very worried.”
Work has mostly been paused until March, when the fourth phase commences between Leslie and Lathrop streets. Come July 2025, it will move down between Clifford and Holmes streets before the final leg kicks off from the University of Michigan-Sparrow facilities through Pennsylvania Avenue.
Some tinkering is still needed on the portions they’ve already worked on. “We still don’t have signs installed for parking or the cycle track, pedestrian and bike markings aren’t complete, we don’t have delineator posts installed for the on-street bike lane section, and there are no street trees planted,” said Lansing Public Service Director Andy Kilpatrick
People’s Kitchen owner Doug Mulkey was among the first to experience some of the drawbacks.
“It’s been an all-around tough season. Even though we were fortunate enough to have access through Kalamazoo to Detroit Street, having Michigan Avenue completely closed both ways definitely impacted business. The water main work also forced us to close at points throughout the summer,” he said.
As a result, Mulkey cited “the worst sales numbers since we’ve been open.”
“That being said, we knew it was coming, so we prepared as a team,” he added, noting their “aggressive” social media presence helped them partially offset the lack of access.
A little over a mile west, Soup Spoon Cafe owner Nick Gavrilides is preparing for workers to hit the roadway directly in front of his business next summer. Already, he said, they’ve felt the pinch.
“We saw a pretty big decrease in traffic. As we got used to it, it kind of picked up. But we definitely saw the impact of it in the amount of people coming through the door,” he said.
He believes the next phases will be “even more intrusive.”
“It’s coming right in front of us, and we really don’t know how to plan for it because no one’s spoken to us about how that will change access to our parking lot and building yet,” Gavrilides said, adding that he hopes to hear from the city or construction contractors “as soon as possible.”
Still, Gavrilides supports the project because he believes the infrastructure upgrades are “definitely needed.” He just hopes that they can garner enough community support in the interim to “make it to the other side.”
Alan Coe, co-owner of the Triple Goddess Bookstore, 2019 E. Michigan Ave., said he was most surprised by the fact that the CATA bus line had to reroute away from the nearby stop.
“We knew the road was going to get ripped up, but what I wasn’t prepared for was losing the bus line. I thought for some reason they’d keep one lane open for that, but they had to do the whole road at once,” Coe said. “It was a major blow for about a year.”
Some businesses have a different outlook. Directly across the street, Hoplite Games owner Rick Ankney said he “saw construction as an opportunity.”
After opening in fall 2023, he moved to the space from a smaller storefront a few doors down last May. Since then, he said, “we actually saw growth.”
“Social media was huge. The biggest thing was that it made it even more important to engage beyond just opening our doors,” Ankney said.
Following his move, Ankney started establishing new community programs like the youth gaming group Hoplite Heroes.
“Through those programs and by offering our space for other organizations to hold meetings, the community really showed out and kept us going,” he said.
“It will resume in front of us again, at least for a small period, so we’re going to feel a pinch,” he added. “But now that it’s open again, we’ve noticed more people coming in who didn’t know we were here.”
Weather permitting, Kilpatrick expects the next phase to begin as scheduled in March.
“The fortunate thing for next year is that the project will wrap up earlier in the construction season. We are closer to 60% done with sewer and water main construction, which takes longer than the road work,” he said.
He said business owners can expect a letter with updates following the new year, followed by weekly updates throughout the process.
“We will offer to assist them with promoting their business, including providing guidance on setting up a website, or creating marketing lists that can be used to get information and promotions out to customers,” he said.
Mulkey, Coe and Hanna said they’ll be keeping an eye on a bill introduced by Sen. Sarah Anthony, D-Lansing, which would provide relief to qualifying business owners impacted by construction delays.
If passed, it would require owners to demonstrate a “significant decline in revenue,” Anthony said. The Michigan Department of Transportation would determine awards on a “case by case” basis.
“We want to make sure that your business isn’t negatively impacted by things that are out of your control. In Michigan, especially with the state of our roads right now, road construction projects are occurring on a day-to-day basis. We need to make sure that small business owners are made whole and are not forced to close their doors because of necessary infrastructure improvement projects,” Anthony said.
Hanna said they are “crossing our fingers that it will be approved so we can apply for it, because I think we really need it,” adding that she’d also welcome some city tax relief.
At any rate, Hanna said, posts on Lansing Foodies and other social media pages have helped them.
“Even though it’s just a little percentage, it’s still worth something,” she said. “We really appreciate how much our community cares and is trying to help.”
