Washington Street bridge work taking big toll on downtown Naperville restaurants: ‘You just hope to survive’
For years, 11 a.m. was the standard opening time for Rosebud, the Italian restaurant located just a few steps away from the DuPage River in downtown Naperville.
No longer. These days, it opens at 3 p.m., a change made at the end of August as a consequence of construction at Washington Street bridge driving the lunchtime crowd away, Rosebud representatives say.
The bridge has long been due for an upgrade. But for businesses nearby, Rosebud included, the project — started in May — has been an ongoing headache of dust in the air, construction noise and congested roads, discouraging people from dining outside when weather permitted.
“For us specifically, it’s been terrible,” said Nick Lombardo, chief financial and operating officer for Rosebud Restaurants.
“Business is down 20% since they started. We had to shut down for lunch because literally no one knows we’re open,” he said. “The road next to us is basically destroyed, we lost the whole side patio during the summer, and we’ve had issues with our plumbing since they started the work.”
Renovations aren’t set to finish until November 2024, at the earliest. Lombardo worries that another spring and summer — the busiest time of the year for restaurants — could again be bogged down by the work.
“We’re concerned about it obviously because you can’t maintain a 20 to 30% loss. … You just hope to survive,” he said.
An overhaul years in the making
The need to replace Washington Street bridge, which sits between Aurora and Chicago avenues, has mounted for years.
Built in the 1920s and widened a half-century later, the bridge was renovated in 2004. But it was a short-term fix. A 2014 study recommended a full structural replacement and in 2016 the city was forced to impose a 15-ton weight limit to reduce further damage from occurring.
That same year, the city started conducting quarterly inspections, which became monthly in 2019.
By September 2022, the Illinois Department of Transportation told the city it had to reduce the bridge’s weight limit to 8 tons and close two lanes.
Meanwhile, the city prepared for a full overhaul. Traffic studies recommended the span be widened to five lanes and right-turn lanes added at the Aurora Avenue/Washington Street intersection, according to the city’s website.
The city secured federal funding to cover 80% of the project. Naperville is paying for the rest, including more than $3 million for construction and engineering costs.
‘Brutal season’ for construction
Other than during the pandemic, Lombardo said, “This is our first down year since we opened (in Naperville) in 1997. And it’s completely out of our control. We pay the same rent, we do everything the same, but our sales are down.”
The city gave “a decent amount of notice” before crews arrived, he said, but the problem is really a consequence of proximity.
“It’s more about the location of where (crews) are putting their equipment for me,” Lombardo said. “If you stand outside, you’re right in the middle of construction.”
Before work got underway, Naperville paid for temporary use of property around the bridge to give crews more access to the site and to stage equipment. Rosebud’s parent company was one of several entities that allowed the provisional access and was paid $26,500 for the temporary land easement.
Lombardo said he was unaware of the temporary easement. Officials for parent company CR River Square could not be reached for comment.
Across the street, new addition to downtown Naperville Davanti Enoteca has had to find its footing at 47 E. Chicago Ave. alongside bridge construction.
“I would say it was just kind of, unfortunately, bad timing when the construction started,” said Sophia Mazis, director of marketing for Davanti’s parent company, Scott Harris Hospitality.
“I think introducing any new concept or restaurant to any new area is a challenge in itself and the construction didn’t, you know, exactly help, but in the long run, we think (a new bridge) will be very beneficial to the neighborhood and actually help us,” she said.
In the meantime, though, Davanti staff said they’re wary of another year of construction after hearing from customers about the toll the bridge work was taking this summer.
“It was hard, you know,” said Justin Kabak, assistant general manager. “The most we could do was sympathize with clientele. … Construction definitely caused a lot of issues.”
Between the noise from machinery and dust kicked up by crews, it “really hurt our patio business,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t want to sit outside because there was all this dust in the air and it was kind of covering everything.”
On the other side of Washington Street, dust posed a similar problem for Bev’s, representatives said.
“It was a brutal season to have that construction, especially for us on the corner with the outside patio,” Raffi Demerdjian, director of operations for Empire Restaurant Group, said. “We couldn’t really set up our tables outside because every half hour, a plate or a glass or a piece of silverware would get dirty from the dust.”
On average, business was down 25% between spring and September, when their patio closed for the season, Demerdjian said.
“That’s a significant number in our business,” he said. “Our margins are very low to begin with.”
Relief but no renovations
In August Demerdjian reached out to Bev Patterson Frier, longtime owner of the property and the Bev for whom it’s named, to see if she could offer some rent relief.
She agreed.
“We voluntarily reduced (their) rent,” Patterson Frier said. “The Empire Restaurant Group has been one of the best tenants that we have ever had,” she said, and she wants to keep them there.
Empire Restaurant Group acquired the property two years ago after Jimmy’s Grill closed. Initially, the group — which also owns Empire Burgers + Brew on Chicago Avenue — intended for Bev’s to be a temporary pop-up while construction on a much larger restaurant to be called Cali’s was done around it.
Those plans were put on hold so they could focus on launching another Empire restaurant in Lombard. But the bridge project played a role.
“The Empire project in (Lombard’s Yorktown Center) was certainly the main reason,” Demerdjian said, “but you know, seeing this construction going on, if we had a bigger restaurant (to run) … we would be in big-time trouble.”
Cali’s is still on the horizon, but their focus will be on staying lean while bridge work continues, he said.
“Without getting into too much detail, we are not making money like we were last year, and that’s a concern,” he said. “As a restaurant, we can survive because of how well some of our other restaurants have done. …But it’s definitely hurting. It’s affecting how much we pay people, how many staff members we hire. We’re trimming the fat, so to say.”
“It’s going to be a very, very busy year”
Apart from bridge work, a separate streetscape project between Chicago and Benton avenues is also planned for 2024, according to Bill Novack, Naperville’s director of transportation, engineering and development.
“We’re going to have a lot of construction down there. …. It’s going to be a very, very busy year,” Novack said.
In anticipation of that, the city has allotted $100,000 for a marketing campaign to help drive foot traffic during construction for both projects, City Manager Doug Krieger said. The effort will be headed by the Downtown Naperville Alliance, which represents the more than 300 businesses in the Central Business District.
“Hopefully it will be better next year,” Novack said. The city is doing everything in its power to tie up Washington Street construction by the end of 2024, he said.
Crews handling the bridge work are more than two months behind schedule. The city has been trying to get contractor Dunnet Bay Construction back on track, but Novack said they’ve “completely refused.”
Dunnet Bay, based in Glendale Heights, did not return requests for comment.
“They just want to argue the challenges that they’ve had and why they should be granted additional time and stuff like that instead of truly sitting down and figuring out … what can be done in order to complete this project,” Novack said.
Now the city’s trying to get them to keep working through the winter. (Originally, the company planned to pause work until the spring.) They’re offering to pay between $100,000 to $150,000 for extra equipment that will allow crews to pour concrete during cold weather, he said.
“If we didn’t do that, it would not get done by November 2024,” Novack said. “That’s the only way they’ll finish it, if they make a lot of progress through the winter.”
