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Canfield businesses begin to feel impact of bridge work
By ROBERT CONNELLY
CANFIELD
Nichole Miner says she has lost 20 percent of her business due to reconstruction of the U.S. Route 224 bridge over state Route 11.
Overall, however, the work is not having a negative impact on businesses as they feared.
Miner, however, is the exception.
“It’s a little worse than I thought it was going to be,” she said. Miner owns Miner’s Tractor Sales Inc., 611 E. Main St., and part of her parking lot was purchased by the Ohio Department of Transportation for the work.
Miner, however, said she now has only one-half of one driveway, which is lined with orange mesh from cones leading vehicles into the lot.
“I’ve had customers yell at me saying, ‘I can’t get in’ and pass me up” and shop elsewhere, Miner said. “They [ODOT] keep clogging up both sides of my driveway.”
Miner added that a tractor-trailer making a delivery recently had to block traffic on Route 224 because it could not fit in the small driveway path for the business.
Farther away from the heart of the construction; however, business owners said they haven’t been impacted as much as they had feared before work began.
“I think it’s OK. ... It hasn’t been that bad,” said Izdihar Mansour, owner of Zenobia, a Middle Eastern cuisine restaurant.
Zenobia sits in a plaza at 584 E. Main St., an area where vehicles get congested with one lane for through traffic.
Diane Laudo works at Curiosity Shop, a few doors down from Zenobia.
“We have not had any problems. ... Our cars get real dusty, but we’re fine,” Laudo said. “People who live around here know the way to get here.”
A.P. O’Horo of Youngstown is the contractor on the estimated $6.5 million job, which is supposed to mirror the U.S. Route 224/Interstate 680 work in Boardman. It will include widening Raccoon Road, and that work is expected to be done in August before the Canfield Fair begins in early September.
Mahoning County commissioners Wednesday approved closing South Raccoon Road in Canfield between Leffingwell Road and U.S. Route 224 for about two weeks beginning June 15.
A detour for that will be Route 224 to Tippecanoe Road to Leffingwell Road. If driving northbound on state Route 11, take state Route 46 into Canfield.
Brent Kovacs, spokesman for ODOT District 4, said, “As far as I know, everything’s going on schedule. Complaints have been minimal.”
Cones blocking half of the 224 entrance ramp onto northbound Route 11 allows construction crews to work on the ramp without fully closing it.
“I don’t think it’s bad at all. Sometimes you wait two more minutes” at the traffic light near McDonald’s, Mansour said.
On the other side of the bridge, Michael Naffah, president of Naffah Hospitality Group, owns the Inner Circle Pizza Canfield, 6579 Ironwood Blvd.
“So far, so good. I can’t complain. It hasn’t really hurt anything,” he said. “It seems like the contractor is being very cautious and conscientious. They’ve done a really good job of keeping the traffic flow and making sure there is egress and ingress into the development.”