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Rideau Street businesses facing disruption with the construction of the $2-billion Confederation Line LRT only learned a week ago that a section of Rideau Street will be closed for three years.

“This is going to affect everyone,” said Corey Hackett, co-owner of Top of the World skateboard shop, which has been on Rideau Street for 23 years. “Every business owner I’ve spoken to in the past few days has been concerned.”

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Starting Friday, the busy section of downtown Rideau between Mackenzie Avenue and Dalhousie Streets was to be closed to cars and most buses.

The city says pedestrians will be permitted in most parts of the area, but construction fencing and heavy equipment has shopkeepers worried that will likely mean lost foot traffic. And they question how such a huge project, in the works since 2012, could suddenly require the closure of one of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.

The Confederation Line is not scheduled to open until 2018.



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“I don’t think that the city understood the scope of what the construction companies required,” said Hackett.