By Grant Lucas

Just over a year ago, the city of Norman began renovating Lindsey St. The renovations will make the road more wide and modern. While the renovations of the street will positively benefit the city of Norman, the businesses that are located on the street are experiencing heavy difficulty in maintaining themselves during the construction phase of the renovated street.

Eleven businesses have already been forced to shut down and there are certainly more businesses on Lindsey St. that will be forced to take the same path.

Linda Johnson, manager at Christmas Expressions on Lindsey St. said, “It is a three year project so we have definitely been impacted and will continue to be impacted because of lower volumes going down Lindsey Street so we are hanging in there but it has been a challenge.”

Across Lindsey St. are signs that read “Business Access”, and these signs indicate sections of the road meant for drivers to enter the lots of businesses. While the construction workers are doing their best to accommodate the businesses while they renovate the road, drivers on Lindsey St. have struggled to adapt to alternate routes that have been created due to renovations.

Linda Steele, manager at Thrift Nation said, “People come in grumpy. They come in fussing about the construction and they don’t like it. We opened November of last year a weekend after Thanksgiving and the construction has been going on the whole time we have been open. They told us they would be finished by October, I’m hoping it will be done by our second year anniversary, which would be the weekend after Thanksgiving this year.”

The affected businesses can only hope that the construction workers are close on their predictions on the time the construction will take to complete, but until then the businesses must work through this difficult time for Lindsey St.