Tim Harty, The Business Times

Road construction, while in the works, is a necessary nuisance begrudgingly tolerated by the people affected the most by it. In the end the resulting nicer streets and highways tend to be worth the temporary inconvenience.

But when the project is a large one, challenging the meaning of temporary and costing your business money, road construction can be downright painful.

That’s the case for several businesses on or near Ute and Pitkin avenues, near the curve in the road that becomes First Street in downtown Grand Junction, where the Colorado Department of Transportation is just a few months into an I-70 Business Loop Improvement Project phase that isn’t scheduled to end until November 2025.

Ute and Pitkin are one-way streets going opposite directions, and each has been reduced from two lanes to one lane for several blocks with CDOT workers holding signs to slow traffic and at times stop it.

Meanwhile, Second and Third streets between Ute and Pitkin have been closed to traffic.

For Ben Van Dyke, owner of Van’s Car Wash at 305 Ute Ave., the road construction has been crippling in recent months. Customers can’t access his business from Third Street now, so the only way in is from Ute Avenue. He put up a sign at the Ute entrance, reminding passersby he’s still open for business.

He gets a trickle of cars coming through, but the bottom line for his business has been ugly.

“We’re probably 85 percent down,” Van Dyke said of his revenues compared with September, October and November a year ago. “Before they closed Third Street, we were probably only 30 percent down.”

Van Dyke is referring to the infrastructure work the City of Grand Junction had to do during the first half of the year before CDOT could get started in late August. The improvements on Ute, Pitkin and First Street are part of a bigger CDOT project that dates back to 2021.

The way CDOT took over is another sore spot for Van Dyke. He said he was told affected businesses would be notified when CDOT was ready to put its crews to work.

Instead, Van Dyke said, “We got caught off guard. The contractor was supposed to contact us about access plans. We never got contacted. They just showed up one day, cones were put down, and we were shut down.”

That was frustrating, but Van’s Car Wash had an entrance that Van Dyke found acceptable. Until he didn’t have it.

“I showed up one day, and both entrances were shut down,” he said. Eventually he got the Ute Avenue entrance back. On a good day now, he said he gets about 30 cars to come through.

The bad days bring about 10 cars. That’s compared with 80 to 120 cars on an average day before the road construction began.

“Our self service (bay) pretty much dried up,” Van Dyke said.

Jeremy Scheetz, the Exulted Ruler of the Benevolent Protective Order of Elks 575, said the Elks Lodge, 249 S. Fourth St., has experienced a decrease in the number of Elks who camp in the lodge’s parking lot. The south side of the Elks’ building faces Ute Avenue, and with Fourth being a one-way street, too, the road construction makes it about as tricky as it can be to access the parking lot, especially with a camper trailer.

“We’re seeing a decrease in our traveling Elks, Elks that come from different lodges, from different states,” Scheetz said. “Some bring their campers, their motorhomes, and come camp in our parking lot. They just can’t get in our parking lot.”

Some Elks call in advance about coming to Grand Junction and camping a couple nights at the lodge, and Scheetz has to give them the bad news.

“We have to tell them, ‘Well, you can’t. There’s no way for you to get your 40-foot motorhome into our parking lot,’” Scheetz said “We’ve had to turn down about 18 of them so far since this has started.”

That means there’s no paying $20 per night for camping, no buying dinner or drinks at the lodge and no supporting other Grand Junction businesses during their stay.

Scheetz said it doesn’t sound like much when he says the average visiting Elk spends about $20 to $40 per night, but the Elks aren’t a big-money operation.

“We survive off of our members,” he said. “Our members, what they buy at the bar, what they buy in food, what they donate in our pull-tab machine or our Jack of Spades on Friday night, that’s what we pay our electric bill with. That’s what we use to pay all our utilities, buy our alcohol with, pay our employees. We don’t have any outside funding.”

Even some local Elks are staying away from the lodge because of the construction. Scheetz said the Elks hosted a graduation party and a Christmas party on Dec. 14, and 160 people attended. He’s positive the number would have been in the 200 to 230 range without road construction.

“They think it’s just too much of a hassle to go all the way down, around and up Colorado or through the alley from fourth to third (streets), so they just don’t come,” Scheetz said.

Scheetz feels bad for the Elks, but worse for Ben Van Dyke and Van’s Car Wash.

“He’s getting hit the hardest,” Scheetz said. “His main entrance is blocked off, and people aren’t gonna deal with the traffic to to go get a car wash.

“I feel like we’re kind of on the lucky side to have a couple other entrances that we can utilize.”

Van Dyke said he’s lucky, though, because he also owns Van’s II Car Wash at 413 Monument Road. Some of his downtown customers are going to the other location to support Van Dyke, and he said revenues are up 10 to 15 percent at the Monument Road site.

“If we didn’t have two sites,” Van Dyke said, “I couldn’t have survived.”