OKC, The Village Road Construction Delays Along Britton Impacting Businesses

Road construction, which has already been delayed several times in The Village, is eating away at local business. And at this point, there’s no telling when the construction will be done. 

This is supposed to be the busiest time of year for retailers but merchants along Britton Road are seeing empty parking lots, broken promises and a loss of business.

The road construction project on Britton between Pennsylvania and May Avenues has been going on for almost a year now. The road is torn up, and traffic is down to one-way because of it. 

At A to Z Factory outlet in the Britton Plaza, they’re lucky to make $15 per day.

“Oh, it’s horrible. I mean when you don’t have any business, they take 90% of your traffic away, it’s pretty bad,” said owner Danny Thomas.

Right next door at ND Foods and Room 3 Vintage, customers are barely trickling in.

“Your normal customers just don’t want to fight the construction. And they don’t come back. They still like you, but they don’t drive to you, because they don’t want to drive through the construction,” said owner Nick Wade.

The Oklahoma Department of Transportation can’t say when construction will be done. Crews just found a water line they didn’t know was there. That could delay the project, which was supposed to be done this month, by several more weeks.

“Right in the middle of the holiday season. Right when people spend money on gifts and everything else. And they’re not going to come here to buy them because they don’t want to drive through the construction,” said Wade.

For now, merchants can look forward to two kinds of days. Bad and worse.

“The good days you might be about 50%. The bad days you’re down 70%,” said Wade. “It’s really tough to run a business when you basically don’t have that much of your income coming in.”