A nearly three-year road construction project is now underway along I‑264 in east Louisville near the new VA Medical Center. The $129 million effort aims to ease long-term traffic flow, but in the short term, it’s creating obstacles for commuters and concerns for nearby business owners.
LPM’s Ayisha Jaffer spoke to Akshay Kadam, the general manager of Noosh Nosh, a locally-owned restaurant just off Brownsboro Road, on how the construction is affecting their day-to-day operations and how they’re trying to adapt.
Ayisha Jaffer: So you're located right near the construction zone. How has this roadwork impacted your business so far, both in terms of customer access and daily operations?
Akshay Kadam: Yeah, it's been hurting us. So we have a regular set of clients. So from hearing them, they were like, it's kind of a pain to get over here because they have to cross over all those detours and then come to this side of Rudy Lane. And normally, for me to go to work, it takes eight minutes from my place. It took me almost 40 minutes. But there is nothing we can do about it.
AJ: Well, I'm wondering, what kind of communication, if any, did you get from the city or state before the project began? Was there anything to prepare you for what's happening?
AK: Formally, there were no communications, no emails, but I was hearing from my other tenants, because there are a lot of tenants in the complex. But as far as officially hearing from [the] city or whoever is authorized, there are no communications. And moving forward, I really don't know, because some people are telling [me] it's a two-year project. Some people are telling [me] it's a three-year project.
The other day, I just went to the construction site because I was so frustrated with the empty tables, and my servers are suffering too. So I just went ahead and spoke to one of the engineers who was working there. And I was just trying to have a conversation with him. I was just trying to get this timeline, because we were confused. Some people are saying it's two years. Some people are saying it's three years. Some of them are telling us that it's going to be in phases, so not the whole construction is going to affect us. So I went ahead and talked to him, and he was like, we are going to do it in phases. But he was like, well, I cannot tell you [if] phase one or phase two or phase three will hurt you. But he said it's a long project.
AJ: And you said, it's affecting your staff, right?
AK: We are not doing that much business, so we have to cut down the staff too. And whoever is on the shift, they have seen a drastic change in their paycheck too. I really love my staff because without them, I cannot do anything by myself. So whenever they don't make money or right now, they are not making enough like they used to make three months ago or two months ago, it hurts. I feel bad for them, but there is nothing I can do to control that either.
AJ: So are you and any of the surrounding businesses affected getting any support or hoping for anything specific from the city, state or community to help get through this time?
AK: So far, no. But as I said, there are a lot of other tenants too. They have been affected too. I've been talking to some of my other tenants, but we don't have a lead. If we have a lead, [we could say], “We are being affected. And then we can gather everyone together and talk to this person and maybe he might have a plan. But as I told you, we don't have any leads. We don't know what to do. No one has reached out to us [to say] “Hey, you know what? Let's sit and talk about this.” And I believe I'm a problem solver. If there is a problem in front of me, I would find a solution for it. Every problem has a solution.
