Concession Street partially reopens

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Some businesses along a Hamilton mountain shopping district are celebrating the partial re-opening of a major east-west traffic corridor. Concession Street is home to more than a hundred businesses, not to mention Juravinski hospital. It’s been a tough 4 months for businesses, when construction cut them off from their customers. But, the end result has many saying the wait was well worth it.

It’s a good day for Rahneem Redah who helps run the Big Bee on Concession where traffic is once again flowing.

“It’s actually helped us a lot. I could guarantee you that our sales did go up at least by 30%. We are happy of course but we are looking forward to the other side of the street to open.”

It was a different story a month ago. Businesses like the Full Spectrum felt the pain when construction closed off Concession from Upper Wellington to Upper Sherman.

“Now that we’ve got the first phase complete the mood has changed to very positive and enlightenment of how fantastic this project truly and really is.” said Concession BIA Chair, Leo Santos.

Concession now has new watermains, full road reconstruction, street names etched in to the sidewalks, and bumped out crosswalks to make crossing safer. The new sidewalks also have urban brail to help the blind. And it’s a much smoother ride for people on or pushing wheels.

There’s still plenty of work to be done here on Concession. Upper Wentworth to East 25th will be closed to traffic until sometime in December, which has Longo brothers food market so upset they won’t even talk about it on camera.

The city of Hamilton says it’s received 5 claims from Concession Street business owners who say they’ve suffered because of the construction. The city’s risk management team is investigating those claims.

The good news is the next stretch of Concession that will open is between East 25th and Upper Sherman. That happens on Monday.