'Killing my business': 7 Street South business owners enraged with new construction, bike lane project

A number of Lethbridge business owners say a massive construction project for the downtown core is breaking ground at the wrong time.

A new construction project on 7 Street South and 4 Avenue South is digging up concern from businesses.

“It’s essentially killing my business,” said John Pyska, owner of Big John’s Books on 7 Street South. “Like we may not make it through the winter because of it.”

The multi-faceted project will include a water main renewal along 7 Street South from 3 Avenue South to 6 Avenue South Pavement rehabilitation and the addition of a protected cycling lane.

“As part of the Third Avenue and Festival Square projects, these are great initiatives to help with the revitalization — to try to encourage multi-modes of transportation downtown and really bring in the feeling of more patios and festivals and people coming down for various events to really support the downtown businesses,” said Crystal Scheit, urban revitalization manager with the City of Lethbridge.

Business owners aren’t pleased with the scheduled closures for the project, which is set to begin construction this week.

“It's going to be devastating to a lot of businesses here including myself,” Pyska said. “This is our busiest time of the year.

“This is my time when I actually save money for when it's bad in November.”

With sports starting up, owner of Doug’s Sports, David Clark says the construction couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“It’ll definitely impact by business this time of year as I have football season starting, volleyball season starting and soccer season starting for indoor and I got no parking,” Clark added.

The City and Downtown BRZ said businesses were consulted during the process, but both Pyska and Clark say that didn’t happen.

“I accidentally heard about it from a friend who was bidding on the job,” Clark explained.

“He said 'oh, I might see you quite a bit in August' and I said, ‘oh, why's that?’ And he said they’re going to tear up your street, and I said, ‘I never heard about that,’ so I came back here and checked with a few other businesses on the street and they said, ‘what are you talking about?’”

The project will reduce the number of lanes along 7 Street South, but won’t impact parking stalls, according to the city.

“This project will help to add value to the adjacent businesses by improving the 100-year-old infrastructure that is in the ground, resurfacing the road with new asphalt, improving many of the existing wheelchair ramps along the way providing multi-modal transportation into the downtown core,” said Bryce Dudley, senior transportation project administrator with the City of Lethbridge.

The city says the project was recommended in the cycling master plan, adopted by Lethbridge city council on July 17, 2017. The cycling corridors functional planning study, adopted by council on April 6, 2020, recommended short-term cycling infrastructure along 4 Avenue South and 7 Street South to connect downtown Lethbridge with the existing pathway and bike boulevard network.

But, Pyska and Clark don’t see the reason for having a bike lane downtown.

“Short term of construction, it’s terrible and long term, I don’t see what it’s going to do for me,” Pyska said.

“Let’s say we put in a bike lanes here, do you think that’s going to increase the amount of people that come into my store, or this store or the comedy store? No, it won’t.”

“This (7 Street South) is a busy street,” Clark added. “It connects to the mall in terms of cars, but in term of bikes, I don’t see any bikes on this street – ever.”

Despite the concerns, Downtown BRZ executive director Sarah Amies says she’s glad to see the project go ahead.

“Overall, we will be really glad when it is over and that is completely understandable,” she said. “We are working very hard with the city to make sure that businesses on 7th Street remain informed — we provide updates through our social media channels on a very regular basis.”

With the project set to be completed by the end of construction season, Clark says he can only hope it's on time.

“For a lot of us on the street, this is our Christmas and I just hope people will come and shop and walk here to come see us,” he said.

The project is funded through the city’s operating budgets, from capital improvement program and external grants.