SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – “How do you say grilled peppers in Italian,” I asked Nicolla Assante inside his market.<\/p>\n
“Peperoni grigliati,” he replied in the prefect Italian accent.<\/p>\n
Assante Italian Market may be in South Whitehall Township, but it’s filled with the sounds, smells and tastes of Italy.<\/p>\n
The business is set to mark its one-year anniversary November 5th, but for owner Assante, it’s more concern than celebration.<\/p>\n
“The Italian word you would use to describe the situation outside?” I asked Assante.<\/p>\n
“Casino caldo. It just means a hot mess,” he smiled.<\/p>\n
Construction along Tilghman Street has shaved total business by 30% since July, impacting shops up and down the street.<\/p>\n
“We have customers that would come in here like once, twice a week, and now they come here maybe once a month. And they tell us themselves that they just avoid the area completely because they don’t want to deal with the traffic,” he added.<\/p>\n
“Sometimes, I’m not sure where I’m turning. I missed but I have to then turn around again,” said Janice Wilson.<\/p>\n
Despite detours, Wilson remains a loyal customer at Perfectly Frank Hotdog Shoppe. Owner Christina Williams says Wilson is a rarity.<\/p>\n
“Profits are down 50 to 60% and it’s just not sustaining,” Williams said.<\/p>\n
Her grandparents founded Potts’ Hot Dogs. Williams renovated and rebranded her shop 6 years ago but is now afraid the final writing is on the wall.<\/p>\n
“This is the quintessential mom and pop shop. So, when you have a business like this, it really turns into another family member. I’ve been here for 16 years. My son grew up here as a baby, and it would be devastating,” she said through tears.<\/p>\n
Wild Birds Unlimited, which is next door, has been around for 30 years but current owner Heather Peterson said that’s in jeopardy. She says business is down 70% since July. She isn’t sure they can make it until December.<\/p>\n
All the businesses we spoke to say PennDOT has not been clear on the impact or the timeline and is slow to add sign markings.<\/p>\n
Signs signaling where to enter plazas and parking lots were just installed Friday at the request of businesses.<\/p>\n
PennDOT did say two lane each way traffic will resume the end of November.<\/p>\n
Adding construction along the stretch will hit phase two next spring and summer, meaning construction will return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTH WHITEHALL TWP., Pa. – “How do you say grilled peppers in Italian,” I asked Nicolla Assante inside…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[153,155,154,7797,7798,3431,28,664,7799,7796],"class_list":["post-9498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-heather-peterson","tag-nicolla-assante","tag-penndot","tag-pennsylvania","tag-south-whitehall-township","tag-tilghman-street","tag-wild-birds-unlimited"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9498","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=9498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}