Tim Steller’s column: Grant Road businesses fold as construction adds to woes

At the Northgate Laundromat, ceiling fans were spinning fast, but the washing machines and dryers were still.

Nobody was there. Nobody had been there for two hours, owner Glen Hawkins said.

“Great, beautiful machines and nobody using them,” Hawkins said, exasperated. “People aren’t coming ’cause they can’t get in.”

That’s the rub all along East Grant Road, from east of North Country Club Road to North Swan Road. As the city of Tucson’s contractor, Granite Construction, moves toward completing Phases 3 and 4 of the Grant Road reconstruction, businesses are dropping off, one by one.

Near the corner of Grant and North Alvernon Way, where Hawkins has his business at Northgate Plaza, construction isn’t the only problem. It’s the combination of street people sometimes scaring away customers and employees, Tucson’s typical summer doldrums, plus the road construction, which has been going on at least two years.

“It got progressively worse as they started cutting off exits,” Hawkins said. “We don’t know how long we’re going to stay open.”

If Northgate Laundromat were to close, it would join a growing list of businesses that have shut at the Northgate Plaza, which is anchored by a Walmart Neighborhood Market. Wells Fargo Bank closed. Subway closed.

For Wells Fargo, the primary issue was safety, said Heather Baron, director of property management for M.A.S. Real Estate Services.

“Their lease goes through 2028, but none of their employees felt safe working there,” Baron said. “Dollar Tree, Walmart obviously will survive. Any of the locally owned — the laundromat, the hair supply place — their business has gone down to near zero.”

But it’s not just that plaza that is suffering. Down the street, Al Basha grocery closed, a closure mourned in the Star’s editorial pages, though I’m told it will reopen under new ownership. Tom’s Fine Furniture shut its Grant Road location. Dante’s Tavern is poised to close, and owner Foy cited upcoming road work.

Other businesses in the next phases of construction, 5 and 6, are learning their land will be bought via eminent domain, making their demise, at least on Grant Road, inevitable.

It’s hard to understand the difficulty unless you’ve driven this stretch of East Grant lately. Left turns are prohibited all along the area under construction. That makes it nearly impossible to get to businesses on the opposite side of the street. Even taking a series of right turns doesn’t equal a left if, in the end, you can’t get across the street anyway.

“It has been a (pain) for us to head east for a couple of years now,” said Bob Bortner, president of the Dodge Flower Neighborhood Association, which is north of Grant. “To go east, you really have to plan your trips.”

“How long does it take to do this? This is absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

The Grant Road construction project is part of the first Regional Transportation Authority plan, passed by voters in 2006. It always was projected to proceed in phases, but the duration of the overall project dragged out because tax revenue came in slower than expected, especially during and after the 2008 recession.

I remember learning years ago that some phases would not be done till 2026 and finding it unfathomable then. Now it is 2026, but there are still two key phases to be done.

Since voters passed RTA Next, the 20-year transportation plan that follows the one passed in 2006, the phases are still being done apace. The problem for the business owners along Grant is that the pace seems so slow.

Hawkins noted that no work was going on that day, a Friday. Work never happens at night or in the evenings.

“They should have been working nights,” he said. “They could have been working Fridays.”

I spoke with Rob Lane, the project manager for the city who is overseeing the Grant Road project. He said phases 3 and 4 are more or less on time, having started in April 2024. These phases are to be completed in October-November 2026.

Lane said that the contractor has had workers labor in four 10-hour shifts per week, which is why they are sometimes not working on Fridays. With the heat, though, they may be going back to five 8-hour shifts, Lane said.

Paving has begun and will go for about three total weeks, Lane said.

“In that three-week period, they’ll have all the base paving down. Alvernon fully base paved. Everything west of Alvernon paved. Side streets east of Alvernon paved.

“When you’re doing paving projects, the goal is to get everything done as fast as possible, but everything has to go in stages, so you can’t open up one side when the other side is still being finished.”

I’m sure all that makes sense from an engineering and project management perspective. But what the project has meant in an area where social deterioration and summer heat are also blasting businesses is that many simply will not survive to enjoy the improved Grant Road .