Broadway shops look forward to business as usual

Ralph Wille found it hard to sell doughnuts amid all the construction work on Broadway.

Some customers avoided his bakery rather than run the dusty gantlet of orange construction barricades and heavy machinery. It made for a long summer, Wille said.

"The street shouldn't have been torn out so long," he said.

But all that's changed in the past month. Broadway has been widened from Houck Place to Park Avenue and the Henderson Avenue intersection relocated.

The nearly $482,000 in street work is part of a $2 million project to widen Broadway to four lanes from Perry Avenue to Houck Place.

In addition, Southeast Missouri State University is spending more than $1 million on its Henderson Avenue entrance to the campus on the north side of Broadway. A parking lot has been paved and renovations made to the exterior of Houck Field House.

All of the construction work is being done by Nip Kelley Equipment Co. of Cape Girardeau.

Construction workers currently are erecting two large limestone monument signs at Broadway and Henderson. Each sign will include a waterfall.

Durable plastic letters, which have the appearance of bronze, will spell out Southeast Missouri State University on each sign.

Southeast officials hope the contractor will finish all the construction in time for the school's homecoming weekend.

But Dr. Dennis Holt, vice president of administration and enrollment management, isn't sure all of the monument signs will be finished in time.

Tom Hadler, project manager for facilities management at Southeast, said he expects at least one of the curved, 35-foot-long signs -- the monument sign on the northeast corner of Broadway and Henderson Avenue -- will be done in time for homecoming.

Holt said the Broadway improvements help to showcase the entire neighborhood including the university.

City manager Doug Leslie said the second phase of the street project -- from Park Avenue to Perry Avenue -- will be constructed next year. Much of that work will occur along the edge of Capaha Park on the north side of Broadway.

It also will include widening Broadway at Clark Street to allow for two left turn lanes: One lane for westbound motorists on Broadway wanting to turn south onto Clark Street, and the other for eastbound motorists on Broadway wanting to turn north on Clark Street. The work also will include expansion of the traffic signals to control the added turning lanes, city officials said.

"We'll just add a few feet on this side and a few feet on that side," said Abdul Alkadry, assistant city engineer.

Wille and his wife, Evelyn, said they don't want to see any more construction on Broadway for a while. "Our busy season is coming up," he said, referring to the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season.

Evelyn Wille recently wrote a letter to city officials asking for a delay in the second phase of construction.

Leslie said there won't be any construction on the second phase for some months. He said city staff never expected to start construction on the second phase this fall.

The city hopes to bid out the project next spring and have it under construction by May.

"It will probably be a summer-long type project," Leslie said, adding that it should be finished by fall.

Koehler Engineering of Cape Girardeau is designing the improvements. Alkadry said plans for the second phase of street work still are being drawn up.

Most of the widening work west of West End Boulevard will occur along the south side of the city's Capaha Park. An old brick house just east of the Hardee's restaurant will be razed to make room for a wider street.

The real traffic bottleneck during the second phase of construction will be in the one-block area from West End east to Park Avenue, city officials and area businessmen say.

Wille said that work once again could make it hard for customers to reach his and neighboring businesses.

He said his customers reach Wille's Bakery at 1215 Broadway by traveling east on the street. That means his customers will have to travel through the West End and Broadway intersection to reach his shop.

"I was so sick of looking at those orange barricades," he said.

But Wille said he likes the improved street now that it's no longer a construction site.

Ron Bohnert, who owns Pagliai's Pizza at 1129 Broadway, said his regular customers continued to dine in his restaurant even during the height of construction.

But he's glad the construction work is over in front of his restaurant and along side it. As part of the project, Bohnert got a new parking lot that borders Broadway and Henderson on the south side.

Improvements to both streets necessitated reconstruction of the parking lot, said Bohnert who currently is renovating his building.

Bohnert said the street project and adjoining campus improvements have dressed up the commercial area. "It's probably raised the property values of everybody," he said.

mbliss@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 123