November 2015 is when the trouble began for Joe Dellert.

Dellert was looking for a fresh start when, with rents skyrocketing, he decided to move his custom framing shop, Artisans of San Francisco, from Union Street to the Sunset District, 5 miles away.

He wasn’t anticipating an effortless transition. The shop had been on Union at Buchanan for 65 years, so giving up decades worth of neighborhood name recognition and goodwill was no small sacrifice. But his struggle to bring in business at his new location proved to be unexpectedly difficult, thanks to a city street improvement project that began in January 2016, just two months after he opened his new shop.

The sprawling streetscape project, which the city expects to complete by late September, tore up Irving Street between 19th and 27th avenues to swap out aging sewer lines, plant new trees, repave the street, and replace old and patchy sidewalks on both sides of the street.

The goal is to make the area more inviting for pedestrians, motorists and transit riders. But it also temporarily eliminated precious street parking and sidewalk space in front of Dellert’s store and those of his neighbors in the bustling business corridor.

“They took so long to do everything, and having ‘do-not-park’ signs in a commercial district, it really slowed down business,” Dellert said. “I couldn’t get signage out there, and there wasn’t much pedestrian traffic, so that made it hard to get my name out there.” Sales didn’t start to rebound until June 2016, he said.

Another business down the street from him, the Hard Wear apparel store, closed after nine years in part because of foot traffic and parking spots vanishing during the project’s most intense phase, the store’s owner, Angela Tickler, said.

Now, as the city gets set to embark on a similar infrastructure project on Irving Street from 19th Avenue east to Arguello Boulevard, a new cluster of shop owners in the project’s path say the prospect of losing foot traffic and parking spaces for patrons is kindling anxieties about losing business.

“My Yelp reviews will say that parking is already hard enough in this area,” said Lorretta Witten, the store manager of Citi Shoes on Irving at Ninth Avenue.

“My biggest concern is that it’ll take a long time and keep my numbers down,” Witten said. “How many people will avoid the area in general just because of the construction? It’ll hurt business,” she said.

Frank McGinn, owner of the Amazing Fantasy comic book store down the street at Irving and Eighth, had a more dire premonition: “We’re going to get crushed,” he said. “People aren’t going to come in — they can’t park, and it’s just a mess during the construction.”

The project, which will kick off next month, is expected to last two years and will involve a host of city agencies. Public Works, which is managing the overall project, will oversee the repaving and curb ramp upgrades, and the Public Utilities Commission will replace and upgrade sewer and water lines beneath the street.

The Municipal Transportation Agency will be adding a number of bulb-outs along Irving to add more space for transit riders to board and exit N-Judah trains. The Department of Technology will take advantage of the exhumed streets to lay down fiber optic cable for high-speed Internet service.

“We hope that the results are going to be worth it. A lot of people were dubious,” said Larry Rosenfeld, the chief financial officer and secretary of Inner Sunset Park Neighbors, a community organizing group.

Mike Rieger, the Public Works project manager overseeing the project, said the city is acutely aware of the impact that large infrastructure jobs can have on nearby businesses. Because of that, the city works closely with nearby merchants and residents to figure out ways to minimize headaches.

The city’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development, which works to promote economic vitality in the city, will join with Public Works to “identify what the needs and opportunities are to support the merchants” on Irving Street during construction, said Gloria Chan, a spokeswoman for the office.

In 2013, to help lessen the blow of a cumbersome sidewalk-widening project in the Castro, the workforce development office provided the Castro Community Benefit District with a $25,000 grant to help the neighborhood’s businesses advertise that their doors were still open during construction.

“‘It’s hard work being beautiful’ — that was our tagline,” said Andrea Aiello, the benefit district’s executive director. In addition to marketing materials, the grant helped fund a website that business owners could turn to for updates from Public Works.

“The city has been dong this for a long time, and I think they’re pretty adept now at working with merchants,” Aiello said. “But merchants need to insist on having great communication (with the city). That’s the key,” she said.

Back to Gallery Streetscape improvements bad for business, SF merchants say 3 1 of 3 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 2 of 3 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle 3 of 3 Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle





In total, the city’s Public Works Department has 15 streetscape projects ongoing or set to begin this year.

Tickler, owner of the now-shuttered Hard Wear specialty clothing store, said her shop was “financially vulnerable” before the streetscape project got under way. And while she supports the city’s infrastructure improvements overall, she said she’d “like to see some additional conversations about how the city can better assist merchants to weather these things.”

“If the city could have guaranteed the loan for me, even for a small amount, I wouldn’t have gone under,” Tickler said.

“We certainly understand that construction is a huge disruption and there is pain associated with these infrastructure projects that come through,” said Rieger, the Public Works project manager. “But as much as possible, we schedule the work strategically, and we always notify businesses as soon as we can prior to construction happening and give them as much notice as possible.”

District Four Supervisor Katy Tang, who represents the Sunset, recognized the frustrations of the Irving Street business owners concerned about trading patrons and parking for the dust and debris, but said the infrastructure improvements will be worth the effort.

“I know it’s painful now, but we don’t want for things to be broken years later, where there would still be disruption,” Tang said.

“Ultimately, we hope that it creates a place that is inviting. The city is going to work as fast as possible with minimal disruption, but I understand — if I was a business owner, I would complain, too.”

Dominic Fracassa is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dfracassa@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dominicfracassa