A major road and utility improvement project in Fort Worth’s growing Medical District has dragged on for nearly a year, and one small business owner says the construction is costing him thousands of dollars and has forced him to cut jobs.<\/p>\n
Eliazar Salinas opened Frezko Taco Spot on 8th Avenue last year. A few months later, construction signs and traffic barriers went up, and Salinas said his sales tumbled.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the construction happened, it was just like a slap to the face. It went from us doing about 1,000. $800, $900 a day to make it $150, $250 a day,\u201d Salinas said.<\/p>\n
Salinas said the impact was almost immediate.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just one day. There was just a bunch of cones out here, big equipment and no sales,\u201d Salinas said.<\/p>\n
The project supports road and utility improvements for the growing Medical District. Fort Worth District 9 City Council Member Elizabeth Beck acknowledged the frustration surrounding the work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI understand people’s frustrations. I truly do. It is frustrating,\u201d Beck said.<\/p>\n
Beck said work hours have been extended in an effort to speed up construction. This phase of the project is now expected to wrap up by the end of September.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of from nine to four daily, they’ll be from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., and that’s in a hope to expedite the process,\u201d Beck said.<\/p>\n
Until then, Salinas said he is relying on his other locations to help keep the 8th Avenue restaurant open. He has also eliminated night hours, resulting in job cuts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to actually terminate our night hours. You know, two people lost their jobs because of it. Cause I mean, we were just surviving,\u201d Salinas said.<\/p>\n
Salinas said he hopes to see some relief from the city as he waits for the construction barriers to disappear and customers to return.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiterally, we’ve been on an island by ourselves, and no one’s came to help at all,\u201d Salinas said.<\/p>\n
This story was originally reported for broadcast by NBC DFW. AI tools helped convert the story into a digital article, and an NBC DFW journalist edited it again before publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A major road and utility improvement project in Fort Worth’s growing Medical District has dragged on for nearly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-411321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth","tag-fort-worth-headlines","tag-fort-worth-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}