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Business owners try to ride out Henley Bridge closure

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Photo by Michael Patrick, copyright © 2011

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Fred T. Williams, co-owner of Knoxville Cleaners in the 3000 block of Chapman Highway, works in his store last week in South Knoxville.
Williams said his business is down about 30 percent since January because of the traffic changed caused by the closing of Henley Bridge. (MICHAEL PATRICK/NEWS SENTINEL)

Photo by Paul Efird

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Work continues on the Henley Street Bridge. (Paul Efird/News Sentinel)

Photo by Saul Young, copyright © 2011

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Jennie Ritchie

Photo by Saul Young, copyright © 2011

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Jennie Ritchie is pictured last week at the South Knoxville property she owns that was occupied by Rally’s Hamburgers, part of a chain of fast food hamburger restaurants. The South Knoxville Rally’s closed last summer after being in business for nearly a dozen years. Ritchie claims that the restaurant saw its business drop by about 25 percent after the Henley Bridge closing.

(SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL)

Business owners try to ride out Henley Bridge closure

Fred Williams says his business is down about 30 percent since Jan. 1. Things could be worse, though.

Williams and his wife, Linda, run Knoxville Cleaners, a Chapman Highway laundry business whose “Go Vols” roadside sign is located just south of the Henley Bridge.

The bridge has been closed since Jan. 3, and Williams indicated the closure has squeezed the flow of customers from other parts of town. As an example, he said downtown customers who normally would have crossed the bridge to drop off their laundry and grab lunch don’t have the time to make the trip now.

Knoxville Cleaners still is in business, though, which is something that other entrepreneurs can’t say. A Ruby Tuesday restaurant at 2714 Chapman Highway closed earlier this year — although a company spokeswoman attributed that move to damage from an April storm — and the Rally’s restaurant at 2320 Chapman Highway also shut its doors.

Jennie Ritchie owns the property where the burger restaurant was located and said that after the bridge closed she cut the rent charged to the eatery’s owner by roughly the amount that his business was down.

“The idea was that if he got profitable again we’d go right back to where we were,” she said. That didn’t happen, though, and the building has now been demolished.

The Henley Bridge was closed to make way for a $24.7 million renovation project that will replace every component of the original structure except the main arches and piers, and also will widen the sidewalks and add a bike lane in each direction.

Mark Nagi, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, said the project is on schedule for completion in June 2013.

“Crews will begin forming and pouring the spandrel columns in the next month,” Nagi said in an email. “After the columns are poured, the caps for each column are to be poured, following with the placement of the beams. After beams are set, the decking can begin to be placed.”

The spokesman also said TDOT will soon air a public-service announcement featuring former University of Tennessee basketball player Dane Bradshaw, emphasizing that merchants in the area of the bridge closure are still open for business.

For now, business owners on the south side of the bridge are in a strange sort of limbo, enduring the anemic traffic counts while work continues, but hoping for a pick-up once the work is completed.

Ben Kenney, a commercial real estate broker with Wood Properties, has multiple listings for property along Chapman Highway — although one of them, Cuppy’s Coffee More, closed before the bridge did. Kenney said the bridge closure has “reduced interest significantly.”

“It has reduced the number of calls that we’ve gotten and when we do targeted phone calls or email blasts, we’ve seen less interest since the bridge was closed,” he said. “But we are excited for the re-opening and we think before too long the interest will pick back up in anticipation of the re-opening of the bridge.”

In recent years, the city has pushed to redevelop the south side of the river, although the efforts have been hampered by the sputtering economy. Still, Allan Miller, president of Chapman Highway music store Disc Exchange, said South Knoxville has a lot of potential once the bridge re-opens.

Miller said his company has seen business fall by around 20 percent and considered moving, but never found a location that was exciting. Instead, The Disc Exchange has pared employee salaries and stopped ordering as many copies for its inventory.

But Miller cited the push to promote an urban wilderness corridor and efforts to establish an Urban Wilderness Arts and Trade District, in which area merchants would offer discounts. South Knoxville, he said, is “going to be a destination for a lot of people over here.”

Article source: http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/dec/05/business-owners-try-to-ride-out-henley-bridge/?partner=yahoo_feeds