OBSERVER Photos by Christopher Blakeslee
Sitting inside his 7-Eleven store, 321 Hazeltine Ave., franchisee Peter Weinreich expressed his extreme displeasure with the amount of money the road construction on Hazeltine Avenue and Baker Street is costing him.
Peter Weinreich, franchise owner of the 7-Eleven convenience store at 321 Hazeltine Ave., is piping-hot over the losses his business has suffered in the last two months because of road construction in front of his store. The road construction began on June 27 and is expected to be completed by the end of August.
“Since they’ve (City Department of Public Works) blocked the road, our store sales are down a little over $100,000,” he said. “They’ve blocked 66 percent of the streets getting to the business, left the smallest street open, then put a road closed sign at the end of it. I’ve had people say to me they thought all the businesses were closed because of the signs.”
A Post-Journal article dated June 25, said the road construction project will have instead of the familiar ‘Y’ shaped intersection near Persell Middle School, a ‘T’ shaped intersection.
“If you think about coming into town off of Baker turning on to Hazeltine, there’s a big wide radius turn there,” Jamestown Department of Public Works acting Director Mark Roetzer, Jr. said. “What we’re doing is we are turning that street, we’re narrowing that intersection and creating a ‘T’ intersection, so that way people, when they turn from Baker Street on Hazeltine, they have to slow down to make that turn.”
City road construction efforts have hampered and stunted the growth of the 7- Eleven franchise storefront, located at 321 Hazeltine Ave. Store owner, Peter Weinreich, solidly blames the city for closing most of the roads leading to the store and claims the inadequate signage leaves people to believe his store is closed.
The project was designed by city Public Works engineers and will be paid for by Chautauqua County. DPW and city Board of Public Utilities crews will do utility work for about two weeks before Lakeshore Paving crews come in to start digging up the road. Cityview Avenue can be used to access Bergman Park during the construction, something Mayor Kim Ecklund stressed since the park hosts baseball games during the summer along with the World Series of Wheels car show and the city’s annual Labor Day Festival at the end of the summer.
However, Weinreich expressed how year-after-year his business has experienced growth — until now.
“I’ve been here almost five and a half years, and my business has been growing, month-after-month and year-after- year,” he said. “In the first six days of this month we’re already down $19,000. If you look at February, March, April and May, we’re up from last year. It wasn’t until the road stuff started (that) we were down.”
Weinreich explained how he’s already had to cut staffing hours to make ends meet and if deeper cuts may still be coming.
OBSERVER Photo by Michael Zabrodsky
A 7-Eleven sign, at Delaware and Hazeltine avenues, points to the business near Persell Middle School while a road closed sign reminds pedestrians and motorists that Hazeltine Avenue is closed, but open to local traffic only.
“I don’t want to say lay people off, but I’ve had to cut employee hours,” he said.
Weinrich talked about how last year his store made more than $3 million in sales, and how he had to add additional staff to each shift. But, this year, more specifically, since construction has started, he’s had to scale back employee hours.
“I don’t know if my business can survive this,” he said.
A phone call and email was sent to Roetzer, for comment. However, no official response has been received at the time of this writing.
Michael Zabrodsky contributed to this report.