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Downtown boon busts profits
By DAN DeWITT BROOKSVILLE -- At noon on Thursday, a prospective customer waded through the dirt and rubble outside Amy's Diner. Tom Iconomou had to unlock the restaurant door and tell the customer the bad news: His restaurant was closed for the day because of the construction on the sidewalks. "I don't blame you," the woman said before turning away. "It's awful." Iconomou agrees completely. The project to beautify downtown Brooksville has blocked most of the parking spaces around his business since shortly after work began in mid December, he said. This week, workers dug up his sidewalk with jackhammers and miniature front-end loaders, rendering it all but impassable. The project is expected to last until mid March, meaning it will ruin the snowbird season -- the most profitable time of year for many local businesses. "The whole season is lost," said Iconomou, who opened the diner with his wife, Marge, in 2000. "I haven't had a single tourist." Not all of the downtown businesses are upset about the work, said Raymond Hess, Brooksville's redevelopment coordinator. Many, including SunTrust Bank and Browning Insurance, are looking at the expected benefits of the project. The brick crosswalks and bulb-outs at the intersections should make it easier for pedestrians to cross streets, Hess said, and are designed to discourage the rock trucks that have long been identified as the scourge of downtown. With the utility lines buried underground, and the sidewalk dressed up with benches and flowers, downtown Brooksville is expected to attract more customers for the shops and restaurants. Including the design, the project will cost $846,000 -- most of it coming from a federal Community Development Block Grant. "This is a downtown revitalization project. Hopefully, it's going to improve downtown," Hess said. "That's the whole point." Representatives from the city and the contractor -- Atlantis Construction of Tarpon Springs -- have unsuccessfully tried to convince Iconomou of that point. "They think thousands and thousands of people are going to come in to (town) to look at bricks. I don't believe it," said Iconomou, who also pointed out that his business depends more than most others on passing pedestrians and drivers. Tom Baur, the project manager for Atlantis, said he had a meeting with business owners before the work started to tell them how the project would progress. The logistics of the job have not allowed crews to isolate the work to one block at a time, as originally planned, Baur said, but he informed nearby merchants when the approach changed. Iconomou is right that Baur ordered Broad Street partially closed for one week when the contractor was not working there, Baur said. But it was because one lane of the road would have to be closed the following week. "There was a week's worth of work when it may have been possible to open it up," Baur said. "But if you open it up, close it, open it up and close it, you confuse traffic. Basically it's a safety concern for our workers." Doris Desylva, co-owner of the Purple Cow antique store on Main Street, sympathizes with Iconomou -- so much so she thinks the city should compensate downtown businesses for their losses. Her store was forced to close 12 days in the heart of the Christmas shopping season because the sidewalk was destroyed and virtually impassable. And business has been so slow since, she said, that proceeds are not enough to cover rent and other expenses. "We're not making enough now to even pay for the business," she said. But she also realizes that the project has the potential to help downtown Brooksville do what it hasn't done in decades: consistently attract shoppers. "It's going to be beautiful when it's done. I don't want to say it's not," she said. "It's going to be lovely." -- Dan DeWitt covers the city of Brooksville, politics and the environment. He can be reached at 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com .
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