Wednesday, March 15, 2000
Kenwood Rd. work irks businesses
Detour deters customers, they complain
BY ALLEN HOWARD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
BLUE ASH — A detour around a construction site and dusty conditions have brought complaints from businesses in the Towne Square, at Kenwood Road and Ronald Reagan Highway.
Some said business has slowed because customers don't want to follow a detour off Kenwood Road as it goes underneath the Ronald Reagan Highway overpass to get to the Towne Square, in the 9300 block of Kenwood Road.
The Ohio Department of Transportation (ODOT) said that section of Kenwood Road had to be closed to repair a retaining wall and a water line. Work also includes resurfacing and widening Kenwood Road.
The closed section of Kenwood Road is part of a $17.6 million refurbishing project for the Ronald Reagan Highway that extends from Galbraith Road to Interstate 71. Completion is expected by June 2001.
“There is just no way we could get the work done without closing Kenwood Road,” said Kim Patton, director of public relations for ODOT. “We expect to reopen the road by the end of June.”
A branch of Springdale cleaners in the 9300 block of Kenwood Road has felt the sting of the closure.
“It has slowed our business down,” said Jennifer Steinmann, assistant manager. “A big problem was that when customers left our store, they could not turn left on Kenwood Road. I think a lot of them stopped coming here because of that.”
Ms. Patton said the road was closed in the fall. Shortly after the closure, about 3 inches of snow fell in December.
Laura Yeatty, a counter cashier at the cleaners, thinks the snow along with the detour might have contributed to the slowdown in business.
“I don't think people wanted to fight the snow, ice and the detour to get to our business,” she said.
Tim Scheid, a pharmacist at Mullaney's Pharmacy and Home Health Care, 9300 Kenwood Road, said the construction has brought a lot of complaints because of the dust.
“Any project this size will always cause complaints,” he said. His walk-in business decreased, but the delivery service increased.
“If people call and say they can't come over, we deliver. I have seen our deliver service increase,” he said.
But there may have been an advantage to his business with the detour.
“We had just moved to this location, and I was having difficulty telling people where we were. Now I tell them if they are driving south on Kenwood Road and see the signs blocking the street, just look to your left and there we are,” Mr. Scheid said.
Blue Ash safety director Bruce Henry said the city worked out the detour route with ODOT.
“We made it as simple as possible,” he said. “I don't see anything else we could have done. We put adequate signs, directing the traffic into the detour. Even while on the detour route, motorists can still see Kenwood Road.”
NEGOTIATING THE DETOUR
Engineers with the Ohio Department of Transportation reconfigured the exit and entrance ramps from the Ronald Reagan Highway at Kenwood Road to use part of them as connector routes around a closed section of the road for construction.
• Motorists traveling north: Turn west into the makeshift detour and continue to Blue Ash Road. Then go half a block north on Blue Ash Road to the north ramp and turn east back to Kenwood Road.
• Motorists traveling south: Do the same in reverse order.
The detour is about 0.6 mile.
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