As a state highway project that began this summer threatens to continue through Thanksgiving, some Cortez business owners are growing impatient.
U.S. Highway 491 and the surrounding area in Cortez has been under construction since early June, as the Colorado Department of Transportation repaves the road and installs utilities. The intersection between the highway and Lebanon Road has been closed since early October, cutting off easy access to several businesses. While CDOT’s website originally estimated the road would be open by Oct. 26, a water main break and other issues have delayed the project, and it is now predicted to last into late November.
The Herbal Alternative, a marijuana store on U.S. 491, had to open a new back entrance in October to remain accessible to customers. But general manager Oliver Scott-Tomlin estimated the construction has still cost his store as much as 70 percent of its weekly revenue.
“We really rely on people being able to find us and being able to get to us,” he said.
Scott-Tomlin said he has called the company in charge of the repaving project, Lawson Construction, numerous times to find out when Lebanon will reopen, but is given a later deadline every time. He feels “there’s no end in sight,” and believes the company isn’t being held accountable for the delays.
According to Lawson Construction’s recorded hotline, Lebanon was scheduled to reopen on Nov. 12 as of Thursday. But the company’s owner, Ken Lawson, said it would probably take about two weeks to open. He blamed the delays on a major water line break that occurred near the highway in mid-October and slowed down the project.
“It hasn’t been fun,” Lawson said. “Everything just accumulated to cause these delays.”
Part of the project involves straightening out Lebanon Road so that it intersects with the highway perpendicularly. That means several of the road’s utilities, like fiber optic cables and drainage systems, needed to be relocated. Lawson said the city’s utility companies, which were responsible for some of those relocations, took longer than expected “to get everything in order” at the beginning of the project. But he hopes, weather permitting, to have Lebanon Road opened, as well as two full lanes of traffic running on the highway, by Thanksgiving.
CDOT’s Region 5 communications director, Lisa Schwantes, was even less optimistic about re-opening Lebanon Road. She said that, although construction workers are “pushing hard” to get the intersection re-paved before cold weather sets in, she doesn’t know when the project will be completed.
“With these projects, the big unknown is always what’s under the ground,” Schwantes said. “When they started digging for this project, they found some very complicated things ... it has been much more complicated than we anticipated.”
She said construction crews will be working Saturdays throughout November in order to beat the cold weather, although there are stipulations in their contracts that require them to take certain days off, especially during the week of Thanksgiving.
The Herbal Alternative, along with other bars and dispensaries in the area, is especially affected by the construction because it gets most of its revenue from walk-in traffic. Other businesses along the highway aren’t experiencing the same losses. Donna Livengood, who owns the music store Rocky Mountain One-Stop, said the construction has, if anything, helped her business.
“It slows down traffic enough for people to notice us,” she said.
The main entrance to Livengood’s store is blocked by barricades and vehicles, but she just advises customers to use the back entrance instead. She knew the repaving project was coming when she moved into the space a few years ago, and designed the back entrance specifically with highway construction in mind.
But not every building along the highway has an easily accessible back entrance. Hospice of Montezuma, also located on U.S. 491, has had its driveway blocked for about three weeks. Executive director Wendy Weygandt said “it’s been a long process,” and she’ll be glad when traffic loosens up again. But her work at the hospice hasn’t been greatly affected, since most of it is done in people’s homes rather than the Cortez headquarters. Weygandt said that, although construction has been an inconvenience for many hospice staff, she’s not too worried about Lawson Construction’s delays.
“They have been responsive,” she said. “I know they have a job to do, and they’re trying to work with us to get it done.”
An unrelated CDOT project in Montezuma County, involving repairs on the Narraguinnep canal bridge on Highway 184, also faced delays in early November. The stretch of road between mile markers 1.2 and 1.4 faced lane closures from Oct. 30 through Nov. 11. The construction, which was supposed to last a week, was delayed first by rain and then by equipment failure, but CDOT’s website announced it was open by 5 p.m. on Friday.