SPOKANE, Wash. — Construction season is getting underway in Spokane, but you might have noticed one major project finally wrapped up.
Construction on Riverside Avenue in downtown Spokane wrapped up on Saturday. That project reduced lanes from four to three and added a new bike lane to the road. Some are breathing a sigh of relief, but some feel the new layout is too difficult to navigate.
"Bike lanes are open, so a lot more foot traffic, a lot more bike traffic, a lot more car traffic, so everything's looking much better than it was a couple months ago," said Jessie Koester, owner of Lord Stanley's.
Koester's restaurant was in business for less than a year when construction started at Riverside Avenue.
"It's kind of hard to gauge how much money we lost during the construction," he said. "But I think we definitely saw an impact."
Businesses like Lord Stanley's now have a chance to exhale as Riverside construction wrapped on Saturday.
"Things are picking up and we're looking for people to come enjoy downtown, it looks great down here," Koester said.
The Riverside project reduced lanes from four to three and added a new bike lane. Other businesses say it was a hassle to navigate.
"I had many people say that they would have liked to come down," said Steve Baldwin, the manager at Spokane Coin Exchange. "But they just didn't want to tackle the construction, it was pretty much a nightmare."
The city says they have 40 new construction projects scheduled for this summer. These include installing a new water tank at 37th Avenue and Crestline, a deck overlay on the Maple Street Bridge, improvements to Strong Road in North Spokane and concrete work at Wellesley and Market.
For more information on when the city is starting and completing construction projects, click here.
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