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<\/p>\nSCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 Construction to make Scranton look cleaner is underway, but where there was usually a flow of customers, activity has stalled for businesses along North Washington Avenue.<\/p>\n
Some businesses have been feeling the effects of the construction as customers don’t have the same easy access to the businesses they usually frequent.<\/p>\n
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The road work to improve the city’s infrastructure has been underway since April.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey’re gonna just drive right past me,\u201d says Gloria from Frank’s News Corner. She says she is grateful for the changes, but the construction stops customers from easily accessing the store.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile they are changing it, it’s dragging on forever, and it’s hurting businesses in town,\u201d she notes.<\/p>\n
She can’t get a break for her bills, and her business is her lifeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have children to feed, I have bills to pay; I just can’t keep going on like this,\u201d she explains.
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While customers usually stop in, grab something quickly, and leave, she says the trucks are stopping customers from parking.
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\u201cIt’s gonna be very beautiful when it’s done, but if it’s dragging on and it’s costing us businesses, you should help,\u201d she describes.<\/p>\n
The city says the goal of the construction on that side of North Washington Avenue is to make the street safer, so when it’s done, it will look like this side, completely flat and safe for residents to walk down.<\/p>\n
Some residents say they’ve had issues parking while the construction is underway.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes you gotta park around the block. Even without construction, you have to park around the block a lot of times too, but yeah, you have to definitely park farther away,\u201d says Ben Bellucci of Taylor.<\/p>\n
Other residents see the construction as a necessity for the city to function smoothly for everyone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do understand that sometimes construction needs to be done. The sewer lines and the water lines are older, and they give out,\u201d says Paul Kelly of Scranton.<\/p>\n
For the city of Scranton, the downtown renovations are a $15 million project with the end goal of making sidewalks safe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’ve chopped up the project so that they’re only working on half a block at a time,\u201d says Mayor Paige Cognetti. \u201cWe are going section by section on the streets that we have the funding to do for safer walking, safer driving.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city aims to complete the renovations at the intersection of North Washington and Linden Street before La Festa begins in September.<\/p>\n
The end goal of the project is to work with businesses to improve the city around them, making it safer and cleaner for their customers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SCRANTON, Pa. \u2014 Construction to make Scranton look cleaner is underway, but where there was usually a flow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265175,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[178,180,179],"class_list":["post-265174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-scranton","tag-scranton","tag-scranton-headlines","tag-scranton-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}