The impacts on businesses, though, are real.

King Street Cycle owner Andy Cox said he faced a 40 per cent decrease in sales when Erb and Caroline streets were closed last year. He had to adjust staff and merchandise ordering, citing it as “a tough time.”

At the end of November 2016, when uptown reopened, Cox was looking forward to getting back his usual levels of business but that’s yet to happen.

“People aren’t coming back to uptown quite yet,” he said, looking out his store’s front window at a row of pylons across King Street at Erb. King Street is closed once again but this time hopefully for only a few days.

Despite the struggles — including an unwanted orange fence along the sidewalk and noise and dirt from the construction site, plus a break-in in August in which the suspect used a large, heavy pipe left behind by construction workers to smash the front door — King Street Cycle isn’t planning on filing for compensation.

“I don’t feel like it would go anywhere,” said Cox.

Although he is disappointed in how GrandLinq implemented the construction, he and his staff are hopeful about the end result.

“We are not anti-LRT,” Cox said. “We can see the region is growing, with a young demographic not as invested in car culture. The LRT is a positive thing.”

King Street Cycle is bracing for even more construction later this spring for the City of Waterloo’s streetscape project. Closures will take place along King Street from Central Street to just south of Erb. But again, Cox thinks the outcome will be positive with bike lanes and larger sidewalks.

“Uptown will be wonderful when this is all finished,” he said.

Peter Davies owns a business on King Street, All My Nails Salon, and is also not filing for compensation.

“This is not a sob story,” Davies said. “The construction did have an impact on us, but we are doing everything we can to survive, to stay positive.

“Filing for compensation would be like suing myself with my own tax dollars. It’s not the answer.”

If the businesses filing claims won, the region would pay using tax dollars, but could be reimbursed from GrandLinq. The OMB would have to determine that the region did not do everything in its power to assist business and minimize the impacts of construction, that there was not a sufficient long-term benefit to businesses, and that business suffered losses as a direct result of construction, rather than other factors like mismanagement.

“The region has done a lot for businesses,” said Galloway.

Initiatives include offering seminars on how to deal with construction, paying for direct mailers to customers, facilitating contests and contributing $20,000 to the Business Improvement Areas in Kitchener and Waterloo.

