HALIFAX – A month of construction on Kempt Road is keeping customers away from the area according to at least one north-end business owner.

Tristan Flynn owns pet day care centre Jollytails on Intercolonial Street, just off of Kempt Road, and said four weeks of sidewalk replacement work has kept his clients away, while the Municipality has done nothing to help mitigate his loss.

Flynn said because of multiple road closures in the area, customers have been unable to get to his business.

“It’s really frustrating from a business point-of-view,” Flynn said. “Most of my customers are trying to drop dogs off early in the morning and so if they’re doctors or nurses or business people that need to get somewhere, they’re not going to risk getting stuck in construction.”

Flynn said Halifax Regional Municipality has not been helpful in trying to plan around the planned closures, as he said he was unable to ascertain specific or even generic schedules regarding the closures in an attempt to inform his customers.

He said as a building owner he pays HRM roughly $45,000 per year in property taxes, and would expect the city would look to help a business owner instead of telling him to essentially, ‘deal with it.’

He said more planning needs to be done in co-operation with local business owners when it comes to construction to help ensure minimal impact, but also said the city should be compensating owners.

“Even if it’s not a financial mitigation…at least some type of communication before the project starts and a meeting of the minds so we know who we can contact and what they can do for us,” Flynn said.

He added with such small margins on a business like his and others in the area, four to eight weeks of construction can be the difference between breaking even for the year or going under.

Flynn also questioned why the work was planned to be done in September, and not in the summer when the area is much quieter.

He said he is meeting with officials from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business to discuss his concerns.