Small business owners in the Sheridan Mall on 1st Ave. are looking to the Town of Cochrane for answers after getting more than they bargained for as ongoing roadwork has taken a very heavy toll on their livelihoods.
And they're not getting any answers from the Town.
Construction first started around mid-July and is scheduled to be completed by the end of October. It aimed to replace water and storm mains, alongside road and sidewalk improvements.
The cherry on top
Owner of Cochrane Vacuum Jeff Izairovich said the ongoing construction is taking a heavy toll on both him and his customers.
“Basically, my customers are everybody, I’ve got little old ladies hauling stuff from the other side of the mall, and a whole bunch of customers that don’t bother coming,” he said. “I’ve been having to work outside of the shop continuously, and it’s worn me down. I haven’t been able to make enough to pay somebody else like I usually do for probably the last three or four months maybe.”
With trucks obstructing traffic into the mall, it often makes accessing his store very difficult.
“On my busiest days, mainly Saturdays, last Saturday I did $11.50. The previous Saturday I did $34.95,” he said. “I’ve had one or maybe two customers coming through the door.”
He added that it also affects his business’ reputation in the community, as the constant roadwork directly affects how fast he completes service orders.
“It’s just making everything difficult, and then the volume of people showing up at my door are down considerably,” he said.
In terms of communication from the town, Izairovich said an administrator was sent to speak with a few business owners, but nothing of value came from their meeting.
“His name is Drew, and I think they sent him as a sacrificial lamb,” he explained. “Basically, he told is how hard-done by the town is, and there’s nothing they can really do to accommodate us.”
With a rough three years for his business due to the pandemic, Izairovich said the construction is the cherry on the top of the cake.
“I pretty much spent my retirement surviving COVID, and then I got a really nice surprise with this and I'm at kind of at my financial wit's end when it comes to what I'm going to do with my business,” he said.
As a business owner in the community for 30 years, Isairovich said he has a good relationship with the Town and really doesn’t want to spoil it. As a vacuum supplier for all their operations, he said he established a good connection with many of their staff.
“I know most of them on a personal level, so I kind of feel a little uncomfortable slagging the town for something that we're not all that sure about who's responsible for all of this, and it’s going to cost me further.” he said. “I've just kind of berated one of their administrators, right? So, I've been kind of thinking about that too, did I harm myself further, stating my case with that administrator?
“If I lose that account with the Town because I've been bellyaching about business too much, that's going to probably sink me.”
Big Trouble in The Little Antique China Shop
The last thing anyone would expect to see when walking into a store that deals in fine china, are porcelain tea cups, dishes, and teapots all over the floor. But for Athena Liu, owner of The Little Antique China Shop, this is the only way she can prevent any more priceless pieces from meeting their untimely demise.
“I have so many broken things in here, and I have customers that just wouldn’t come in,” she said.
On a day-to-day basis, the only two things that Liu said she deals with are vibrations and broken china.
“In here, your heart is in your throat and ready to jump out,” Liu said. “You never know when’s the next piece going to hit the floor, you just hope it doesn’t happen.”
With more than three boxes filled with broken china, one of the notable pieces that broke most recently was over 100 years old.
“The one that really broke my heart was one of the teapots that was from 1902 that got broken,” she said. “It’s irreplaceable, you can’t put a price on it. I have a retail value on it, but you can’t replace it. It’s gone.
“Sometimes they can make it through the World War I period, the World War II period, [but] it didn’t really make it through Cochrane construction.”
From the hard to ignore machinery working outside, to the vibrations rattling the porcelain goods among the shelves, Liu said it has been like that everyday for the last few months. The biggest frustration for Liu has been the Town’s attitude toward the tenants in the mall.
“I’ve been talking to the head of the construction department, and I told him what happened to the store, because at that point, no one else was really raising a flag,” Liu said. “I was told, because of the reality of my store, I should take everything down, pack them, and close the store for a bit. That’s what I got after talking to them.
“I said, if you come to the store and personally see, packing everything up is not an option. It took me two months to set up this store at the very beginning. I just said, unfortunately, that’s not happening.”
Moving forward, Liu doesn’t know what to expect from the Town or the roadwork that's taking place just a few steps from her shop’s door.
“As far as I know, they aren’t done, they’re going to come back next year and do the same thing,” she said. “We’ll just have to see what the town says. We want to give the town a chance to make things right, before we make the next decision.
“Things do happen and we want to give them a chance to fix things, before we go crazy. We’ve been patient for the past two months, but like I said we want to give them a chance to see what they have planned for us.”
Growing pains
Sharon Kulhavy, owner of Final Touch Art Studio, said the construction poses a danger for both her and students in the studio.
“So, the vibrations caused plastic coverings on the light over top of the students on easels and tables, to loosen up and I was trying to put them back in,” she said. “Several of them came crashing down and they’re broken now, but they’re very sharp and it’s a safety issue. We’ve just started taking them off because there’s no sense in having someone get cut from them if the vibrations are so bad.”
As both a retail art supply store and studio, there have been fewer clients showing up and supporting her business over the last few months due to access issues.
“We would sell about $300 to $400 a weekend on supplies, and in the two months we had construction, we only had three clientele in,” she said. “So that has gone down the tubes 100 per cent.”
On the studio end, attendance for her paint nights have taken a hit due to difficulty accessing her studio.
“I usually have an average of about 26 people for a paint night, and right now because of construction, we’ve had comment on Messenger saying that they would love to come down and do our paint nights, but they will not go down to our area,” Kulhavy said. “So, I’ve had it drop down to six people instead of 26 on average, and that is at a cost of $50 per person when we do them.”
She added that 11 students decided to wait until construction is complete before returning to her studio, due to how difficult it is for them to navigate the area while carrying art supplies.
“So, I’ve lost an average of 168 times 11 people per month,” she said. “I’m not making enough to pay my bills, my other instructor, Wendy, and my rent. I’m not even making enough to pay myself at this point.”
With the task of repaying $40,000 in CERB loans, Kulhavy said she is in a desperate situation to pay it back, because of the entire situation that took place over the last two months. The Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) provided financial support to employed and self-employed Canadians who were directly affected by COVID-19.
“So, I’m looking at, do I get a personal loan? What do I do to keep my business afloat so that I can pay the government back in time?” Kulhavy said. “It was looking like it was going in the right direction, and now all of a sudden, it’s like we’re having another COVID shutdown.
“It’s no different and it’s bad. Like this weekend, as you know, you can’t even get into the parking lot. Yes, they’re paving, but we didn’t get a notice. We didn’t get a phone call.”
Kulhavy said she’s lived in the community since 1968 and witnessed the many growing pains the town experienced over the years. She knows that change and construction is inevitable, but she believes the Town handled it poorly.
“I don’t mind change, I don’t mind construction, [but] I do mind when a town doesn’t plan and think about the other businesses and homeowners, and doesn’t contact a business that’s going to be directly affected to find out what they can do to make this a little better for us,” she said. “There’s no communication.”
Kulhavy said she doesn’t know what to do anymore. She’s terrified that this is it, and she cannot afford any alternatives.
“My husband and I are selling our house and we bought another place that’s lower in cost, so that we maybe pay back the government and survive,” she said. “We’re moving all the way out to Sundre, because that’s what we can afford.
“So, the house we’ve been in for 10 years, just finished renovating, and love, we can’t stay there anymore. Not with COVID closing us down, and now this. We just listed our house yesterday night because there's no other way to survive.”
In closing, Kulhavy said lip service from theTown is not good enough anymore. She said it is important to figure out a way to have some form of financial aid for small businesses in Cochrane.
“They need to maybe step up and pay for our rent because it’s not the property owner’s fault,” she said. “They’re not going to give us a break. They need to pay their bills.
“But because this is so poorly planned, I believe the Town of Cochrane should actually help us out with our rent.”
Town’s response
In correspondence from The Town of Cochrane, they are unable to provide answers to questions regarding businesses in the Sheridan Mall in time for publication, as administration remains focused on the wastewater incident.
Over the next few days, crews will pave Centre Avenue from First St. to William St., and any remaining unpaved lanes of First St. East. In spring 2024, remaining work on Centre Ave. and First St. will be completed.
