Union Lake Road Construction In Commerce MI Ends November 1, 2008
Critical Real Estate Tips
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I live in Commerce Township, so this construction has been in my face this entire summer. Instead of taking 25 minutes to get to my office in Northville it has taken 45 minutes. Saturday November 1st, officials are supposed to be opening the Union Lake Road between Richardson and Commerce.
This is where it gets ugly. The road is only open for this winter and will go back under construction come spring of 2009. The road will close again sometime around April to excavate unstable soil north of Richardson Road and rebuild the roadway.
According to the Leslie Shepard-Owsley of the local newspaper, Spinal Column, the decision to delay the project's completion was prompted by an RCOC dispute with the project contractor, Cadillac Asphalt and subcontractor Oakland Excavating of Pontiac. The contractor reportedly didn't want to perform peat excavation in the closure area and suggested an alternative. The RCOC found the alternative unacceptable. Based on soil samples, the RCOC insisted on the peat excavation that was already included as a preconditionin the project contract. The RCOC is considering legal action against the contractor. By the way did I mention this project cost approximately 6 Million dollars? Ouch!
The construction has taken much longer than anticipated and the funny part is 50% of the days there was nobody ever working on the roads. In the meantime, business owners are going out of business on Union Lake road left and right. I also own a Fantastic Sams in Commerce and in the shopping center I'm located in I know Image Sun Tanning and a local Jewelery shoppe has closed it's doors. Traffic counts have diminished from over 33,000 cars per day to less than 10,000 cars per day. At Fantastic Sams our business is down 40% and just last week I decided to run a special for $7.99 for a haircut, just to try to get our customers back in the door. Thats almost half of our normal $14.95 price.
I guess when it rains it pours. I just can't believe we are going to have to go through this all over again next year. Unbelievable.
*Photo by Dave Mcmt from Flickr
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