Downtown construction impacting local businesses in Bismarck

BISMARCK, N.D. ( KXNET ) — For about four weeks now, construction has been going on in Downtown Bismarck. This caused some road closures last week. On Wednesday, the road finally reopened. However, businesses downtown are struggling because of the ongoing project.

“It hurt. As you can see, you cannot find our parking spots, but today is way better compared with last couple weeks. It dropped our ability to get our customers, tons of them,” said Amy Xu, Manager at Nara Ramen.

Nara Ramen, is located on North 3rd Street in Bismarck, and they offer authentic Japanese cuisine. They rely on parking on the streets downtown for their customers, however, managers say that there is a parking lot next to their building that they can utilize but only after 5:30 P.M. since it’s the city’s parking lot.

City Engineer, Gabe Schell, said the project is to widen the sidewalks and add light fixtures for safety purposes. Schell said they are aware of the impact that construction can have for these businesses, so that’s why they reopened the road as soon as they could. However, Schell said this could last a few more weeks.

“In a situation like this, we’ve ensured that there’s always pedestrian access to their storefront at all times. It might come from the north or might come from the south. So, we’ve never blocked off that entire block face to make it inaccessible. However, that might mean you have to park a block or two blocks away to gain access to that business or that establishment that that customer was used to going. It does change the traffic patterns, but we try as hard as we can to limit that impact so that it’s just for either a short duration or when it is being impacted, that we still provide alternative and reasonable access during that construction time,” said Schell.

Schell said most of the construction should be done by the beginning of August, but the final touches, like adding trees could take until the end of the construction season. Owners with Nara posted about the construction on Tuesday on Facebook, and the managers said that they have had a lot of community support since that post.

If you would like to learn more about their hours and their food, head to their website .

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