U.S. 41 closure: Businesses feel effects of stalled roadways

U.S. 41 is one of only two major north-south roadways connecting Lee and Collier counties. Bonita Springs lies at the heart of that connection and is often inundated with traffic from both directions.

Severing one of the city's main roadways spilled even more traffic onto Interstate 75 and Bonita Beach Road, along with West Terry Street and Old 41 Road. The detour caused employees to be late to work and customers to stay home or face being stuck in traffic.

Retailers were hit hard by the road closure.

Nancy Keefer, president of the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, said some local stores were reporting a 50 percent or more drop in business because of the broken gas line.

"It's definitely a major concern," Keefer said. "Typically, this week and the weekend is a major shopping time for the holidays. There are some retailers who are concerned about the timing of this. They're feeling it."

Keefer said although she and others in the business community realize that traffic and emergency officials are doing all they can to fix the leak and reopen the road, closing all lanes of U.S. 41 for more than 24 hours triggered a significant loss for the local economy.

"We realize that safety is the main concern, but it's a pretty bad situation for the retailers," Keefer said.

Victoria Beckner, owner of Artful Diva near the southeast corner of U.S. 41 and East Terry Street, said the road closure has already cost her thousands of dollars.

"I have a jewelry show planned for this weekend," Beckner said. "The artist representative from New York is sitting in a hotel room asking me if he should go to the beach. I sent out 21,000 postcards to publicize the event. I am losing about $10,000 a day and probably about $30,000 for the weekend."

Beckner said having the road closed during the beginning of the winter tourism season didn't help either.

"Bonita business people are looking forward to the widening of U.S. 41," Beckner said. "I am sorry that the management was such that a major part of the work is being done during season. We have had two lackluster seasons and this could put some of the smaller places out of business."

"It majorly disturbed us (Thursday) night," said Georgia Dampier, general manager of Papa John's pizza on the northwest corner of U.S. 41 and Bonita Beach Road. "I had one driver going to Coconut Road and it took two hours just to get there. It's a big mess."

Virtually every type of delivery company working near the Collier-Lee border felt the effects of the stalled roadways.

Roberto Aquino is a dispatcher for Interstate Transport in Fort Myers and said he spent most of Friday finding alternate routes for drivers traveling through the Bonita area.

"I had to re-route my guys down to Immokalee Road and then back to (U.S.) 41," Aquino said. "I had quite a few unhappy campers. They typically average about 10 to 11 loads a day. They probably only delivered six or seven today."

Aquino guessed that truckers delivering fill dirt and rock from mines on Corkscrew Road to the Wiggins Pass area lost about 25 percent of their wages Friday. Truck drivers are paid by the amount of material they deliver.

The road closure was particularly costly for national magazine sales and rack manufacturing company Source Interlink and its 275 employees. The company's headquarters is in the Riverview Corporate Center, which was evacuated because of the broken main.

Jim Gillis, Source Interlink's president and chief operating officer, said the lost day of business meant $1.1 million worth of invoices went undelivered and left him scrambling to figure out how to distribute employee paychecks.

Gillis was in New York on business when he learned of the situation about 5 a.m. Friday. By noon, he was on his way to the airport to fly back to Southwest Florida, wrapping up his New York trip several days early.

"We had no contingency plan for something like this," he said from his cell phone while en route to the airport. "I don't know that there's really anything I can do once I get there, but I just feel like that's where I should be."

Staff Writers Karie Partington and Riddhi Trivedi-St. Clair contributed to this report.