St. Matthews road improvements may force business to move, owner says

A St. James business owner says road improvements that include bike lanes have him looking to relocate his shop.

Rick Wagner, owner of Signmeister on St. Matthews Avenue, said while the road is in desperate need of repair, the planto add protected bike lanes on either side means the road will be reduced by one eastbound lane.

That's the on-street parking lane in front of his business.

"There's about six spots in front of our business and just past our business there's a few more," Wagner said. "Typically on a busy day, almost all of those spots are used up."

Wagner said he received a letter from the city about the repairs to the streettwo months ago. When his landlord asked for the plans, they discovered in addition to the replacement of the sewer and water systems, St. Matthews will shrink to three lanes.

"We were confused why they didn't mention anything like [the bike lanes]to us."

Wagner said he and his landlord metwith St. James-AssiniboiaCoun. Scott Gillingham and representatives from the planning and property department, and suggested waysthe lane could be kept, including installing a bike lane on only one side of the street. However, the city did not modify theplans, Wagner said.

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"Our concern is they're leaving parking across the street, but there's a boulevard there and we have couriers coming in with heavy packages. We thought that would probably be a little bit dangerous for them, walking across the street."

Gillinghamconfirmed there was a meetingwith business owners to explaintheplans, but the city has a mandate to build protected bike lanes when new construction happens, and two bike lanes are necessary.

"From my understanding, it has to do with the predictability of traffic flow for the bikes, similar to drivers," Gillingham said. "Engineers try to avoid having bicyclists having to cross the street to get to the bike path. It becomes a safety issue for cyclists and for drivers."

The bike lanes on St. Matthews will eventually become part of the Yellow Ribbon bike trail, which, when complete, will give cyclists a protected path from west St. James to downtown, Gillingham said.

Wagner said they don't get many cyclists on St. Matthews.

"So we didn't see the need for this."

Our concern is they're leaving parking across the street but there's a boulevard there and we have couriers coming in with heavy packages. We thought that would probably be a little bit dangerous.- Rick Wagner, owner of Signmeister

Wagner was glad the road is being fixed, but now he's not so sure.

"It is terrible. It's been terrible for 20 years. I'm glad they've finally got to it. They've just messed the entire thing up."

Moving will cost his business a lot of money, he said.

"A potential move for our business could cost $20,000, so I told him I'd rather they didn't fix the road and just leave the thing as it is."

Homeowners next to St. Matthews were also taken by surprise, he said.

"Their concerns are that we're going to be plugging up residential streets with our parking, which is the truth, that's going to happen. And if we do move, another business is going to move in here and there's going to be eight to 10 cars worth of parking that we're going to be taking away from the residents."