Months-long Vancouver road closure worries businesses as revenue drops

Residents and businesses along the Broadway Corridor in Vancouver are now dealing with a four-month-long road closure through Mount Pleasant.

The construction, part of the Broadway Subway Project, is expected to cause significant disruption in the area.

“I sold my house three years ago,” Fable Diner owner, Ron MacGillivray, told Global News.

“All the money is kind of going into this business to kind of keep it going and I don’t know. I mean … we figured we’d have enough kind of to get through if it was, like a year after, but right now we’re kind of at that point that … I don’t know.”

MacGillivray said his revenue is down 45 per cent, after barely surviving COVID.

He said this closure is yet another blow to his business and multiple others in the area who say that the B.C. government has not stepped up to provide proper assistance.

“We’re dealing with this for the next five months, and then another year, two years after that of construction,” MacGillivray added.

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“So we’re now 45 per cent down, or we’re gonna be down 50 or 60 per cent for the next five or six months, and then I don’t know.”

Neil Wyles with the Mount Pleasant BIA said countless businesses have closed along the strip due to the construction.

“We’re going on six years now,” he said. “Six years of a major construction project through the heart of the city.”

1:57 Businesses frustrated ahead of stretch of Broadway closing

The closure, between Main and Quebec, means vehicles will be rerouted to 8th Avenue and parking in the area will be restricted.

TransLink says that transit users will also have to navigate changes.

“So what it means is the 99 and the 9 won’t travel through that one block, and instead, the buses will actually detour around it using 8th Avenue and Quebec Street, so they’ll rejoin the normal route after that,” Anita Bathe, a spokesperson for TransLink, said.

“But they do have to make sort of that little detour.”

B.C. Transportation Minister Mark Farnworth is scheduled to meet with the Mount Pleasant Business Improvement Association on Tuesday to address their concerns.

The Broadway Subway Project is slated for completion in fall 2027.