Fifth Street funk

It’s been six weeks since anyone could drive to Allen Harris’ barbershop or pull into the parking lot right next to it to walk in for a haircut.

Cosmopolitan Beauty and Barber Center is wedged in the middle of two blocks of Fifth Street that are closed for a seven-month construction project. The shop is operating at a loss for the first time, Harris said.

Revenue has dropped 40 percent. Harris is behind in his rent and his utility payments were late last month.

“It’s not like it takes a lot of money to keep me in business, but it does take all of my customers to keep me in business,” said Harris, who took over the decades-old shop six years ago. “… I think that (the project) will serve the area well. I just hope that I will make it through this without going out of business, or having to move.”

Lynchburg city is installing new water lines and a traffic roundabout on Fifth Street, leaving a two-block stretch of road closed until August.

City officials are looking for ways to help Harris’ barber shop and two other businesses on that stretch — a restaurant called Pisces 706 and ColorTyme Rent to Own — survive while the road is closed.

There is no legal requirement for the city to compensate businesses, but city officials don’t want the project to bear the blame for putting people out of business.

“A couple of them are saying (they) might not make it,” City Manager Kimball Payne told a city subcommittee recently. “Once Fifth Street is done, the businesses will come. But we don’t want to kill the ones that are there right now.”

Before closing the street on Jan. 21, the city installed a ramp to a parking lot across the street from ColorTyme. It also made signs to direct local traffic to businesses in the area.

After construction began, the city placed a biweekly, full-page advertisement in The News & Advance showing the loca-tion of 37 businesses and three public parking lots on the Fifth Street corridor.

Jeff Tepper, owner of ColorTyme, said that is not enough, and that the city needs to act soon.

He moved his store to Fifth Street in December, before the city announced that it would close all three lanes of traffic in front of his store.

Tepper said the city’s efforts to help haven’t been up to par: the detour signs named his store incorrectly at first. The black-and-white newspaper ad that he shares with 36 others isn’t sufficient to get people into his store, he said.

His store broke its earnings records in December, he said, but its revenue dropped by half since the road closed. While he considers laying people off or moving again, Tepper said it’s past time for the city to offer meaningful help.

“They haven’t stepped up to help with any revenue stream,” he said. “We’ve got the same bills going out, with less revenue source coming in.”

“We’re feeling the crunch, and they’re taking their sweet little time working on it.”

Lynchburg’s Economic Development Authority, the subcommittee that could provide financial help to the business owners, doesn’t meet again until March 19. Payne hopes to hammer out a plan the EDA directors could vote on then.

At the EDA’s last meeting, on Feb. 26, directors said that they felt the businesses were receiving “tremendous advertis-ing” already.

Payne told them that the business owners had said they would like some help with their rent. He suggested that the EDA could give interest-free loans to the three businesses whose traffic is fully cut off. After the road reopens, the city could determine how much their income was set back by the construction and forgive that much of the loan.

EDA members suggested giving façade improvement grants to the businesses’ landlords if the landlords reduce the rent they charge during the construction project.

Payne pointed out that the landlords might not have a vested interest in helping the businesses. After the street is reno-vated, the landlords might be able to attract tenants that would pay higher rent, he said.Payne later said that if the city does help the landlords with façade grants and the landlords help the businesses survive, everyone wins. That is one plan he is developing to present to the EDA.

Plans to aid affected businesses have been complicated because they could set a precedent. Future projects could cause more businesses to claim injury and expect the same treatment, Payne said.

Also, it’s hard to know whether a business lost customers because of the construction or because of the economic downturn.

Some of the businesses on Fifth Street just outside the construction zone said they haven’t been hit hard. Kenny Spruce, manager of Shenandoah Tire, said he’s had a lot of business as people get their tax returns.

If sales have slowed at all at Speakertree Records, it might be because February is a bad month for retail anyway, said owner Blair Amberly.

Antwone Sparrow, a barber at Wilson’s Barbershop, said business has dropped but it’s nothing they can’t handle.

“Regardless of that street being tied up, and the economy, if people know where you are, they’re going to come to you,” he said.

Marjette Glass, director of Lynchburg’s Office of Economic Development, said her department was not asked to get involved until shortly before the street closed.

“I wish we’d had something cut and dried,” she said. “As far as (I was) concerned, the advertising was going to be it. That gives back to the local economy by paying for an ad … and it gives them long-term exposure.”

However, “If it were in front of my business, I would probably not feel any differently than these folks do.”