Business owners say construction on Philema hurts bottom line | PHOTOS

ALBANY — Ryan Ellsworth remembers reading an Albany Herald article about then-pending work on the U.S. Highway 19/Jefferson Street Interchange road construction project that would eventually impact Jefferson Street and Philema Road.

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“The two things that stick out about that story is how the Department of Transportation said they would not impede traffic and would not interfere with retailers doing business while they were under construction,” said Ellsworth, the retail manager for Good Life Vapor, one of eight stores in the 118 Philema Road Oak Place shopping plaza. “We’ve thought a lot about that over the last couple of weeks.”

During a period that some Oak Place retailers say stretches back several weeks, not only has their business been impacted negatively, at times it’s been completely shut down. And some say they have figures to back up their claim.

“We average doing between $3,000 and $4,000 worth of in-store business a day,” Good Life Vapor owner Jeremy Dollar said. “In the last couple of weeks, the average has been down around $1,200. We’ve never, since we opened, had a day that we did under $1,000 worth of business, but we almost did the other day. We ended up $23 over.”

Dollar, as well as a representative of Carroll’s Sausage and in the Oak Place plaza, say workers have, for hours at a time, not only parked equipment in their parking lot, but they’ve at times blocked off all entrances to the complex.

“We knew there might be some issues when they started construction,” Dollar said. “But we didn’t expect them to be disrespectful to people who were trying to conduct business. If you’re going to shut down access to someone’s business, logic would seem to dictate that you’d at least have the courtesy to go in and tell the businesses impacted.

“But when Ryan called Oxford Construction (the local contractor on the $13 million-plus Department of Transportation project), they said they weren’t budging from their plan, which including blocking off access to our businesses for hours at a time.”

Adds Ellsworth, “They basically told us, ‘We know this sucks, but sorry, that’s the way it goes.’”

An official with the state Department of Transportation initially told The Albany Herald Tuesday that the agency had no reports of complaints associated with the Jefferson/U.S. 19 Interchange project, but later indicated project manager Mike Snipes said there had been “access issues” during the final day of a concrete pour when rain interrupted the work.

“We don’t have any official reports of complaints, but Mike (Snipes) did say rain led to ‘access issues’ during work a couple of weeks ago,” DOT District Communications Officer Kimberly Larson said. “I know when we do work around a business, we are required to leave at least one access point open. If people are saying all access points were blocked at businesses there, we need to get in touch with the project contractor.”

Oxford Engineer Jay Griffin did not return a call seeking comment for this article by The Herald’s deadline Tuesday.

Carroll’s Sausage store manager Laura Newman said sales there are “way down” over the past two months, exacerbated by customers’ inability to even access the meat retailer’s parking lot.

“Our manager came by the other day to check on things and a construction guy standing near the entrance (to the plaza) told him he couldn’t go into our parking lot,” Newman said. “Our manager said, ‘Don’t tell me I can’t go into my own store.’ Even when they haven’t had cones set up at the entrances, customers don’t know if they can come into our store.”

Dollar supplied numbers that he said show the impact on Good Life Vapor.

“We always do more than 100 transactions in a single business day,” he said. “One day last week that they blocked access to our store, we had 37.”

Dollar’s dealt with some pretty big numbers since opening Good Life Vapor. After using e-cigarettes to stop smoking and finding that he didn’t like the flavor of the food-grade “juices” used in the process, he conducted research on the process and used $150 of his own money to create his own flavored juices. When friends heard about his creations, they started asking for samples. He eventually started selling the products, outgrew his home-based business and started Good Life.

He now has the Philema Road location, another store in Americus and a lab where he does product research and development. With 21 employees, his initial $150 investment has turned into what he says is a “between $10 million and $20 million business.”

Good Life Vapor sells to more than 35,000 customers — in-store and online — in “all 50 states and 26 countries, with exclusive distributorship deals in Europe and Canada.”

Lee County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Lewis Harris is typical of the store’s customers.

“I haven’t had a cigarette since New Year’s Eve two years ago,” Harris said. “I’ve had other health issues (a job-related back injury), but vaping has done away with the congestion and allergies that always bothered me. This is a great product.”

Serving a customer base that is, essentially, dealing with an addiction makes access to Good Life Vapor (and other similar retailers) vital for regular customers.

“This is an addiction-based business,” Dollar said. “Our customers are looking for a safer alternative to cigarettes. Studies have shown our products are 95 percent safer and there is no second-hand danger from our products’ vapor. Blocking access to our store — in some cases, making people drive 22 extra miles just to get here — offers them two alternatives: go somewhere else, which is bad for our business, or go back to smoking, which is bad for them.”