KC Streetcar extension has Main Street torn up. Businesses there need your support | Opinion

Just after 8:30 one morning last week, Fazal Sohail was in his usual spot behind the glassed-in checkout counter at the Shell gas station and food mart at 38th and Main, feeling the way he’s been feeling a lot in the last year or two — lonely.

“Business,” he says, “is very, very, very slow.” So slow, in fact, that vendors who restock the shelves there have quit coming weekly, and now come about once every three weeks.

And that business is not alone in trying to survive since construction began in April 2021 on the extension of the KC Streetcar from Union Station down Main Street south to the edge of the University of Missouri-Kansas City.

As that route became a frustrating, sometimes-confusing obstacle course, doing business along this primary Midtown street has become what Kevin Klinkenberg, executive director of the Midtown KC Now organization, calls “a huge challenge.”

The bad news is that it’s not going to get much better for shops along the route until the streetcar extension opens in 2025, as projected.

The good news is that all of us can help by doing more than just sympathizing with businesses that have been affected. We can intentionally go to Main Street and buy a burger at Wendy’s, or order up a slab of Gates Barbecue ribs at Linwood and Main, or enjoy a cubano sandwich at Cafe Sofrito at 3731 Main.

We can get some coffee at the Shell mart and say howdy to Sohail. We can see a play at the Metropolitan Ensemble Theater, which is housed in the old Warwick Theater in Main’s 3900 block. And we can go to 4040 Main and give blood at the Community Blood Center, which continues to be desperate for donors.

After all, this streetcar project is supposed to benefit the whole of Kansas City, so the whole of Kansas City — not just businesses along the route — should be sharing more in the inconveniences of its construction. It seems only fair.

The tracks for the streetcar extension now have been laid from Union Station to south of 36th Street. Those and the tracks to be laid over the next two years will connect the eight new stops from Union Station to 51st and Brookside.

The streetcar’s website at kcstreetcar.org has lots of detailed information you can use to track the progress and to get a better sense of the size and scope of this huge undertaking.

Those details help explain why Main Street has been in noisy, grimey, shape-shifting upheaval.

The streetcar website, for instance, reports these milestones reached in 2022: the 192,726.64 total labor hours; 10,386 feet of track installed; 55 Overhead Catenary System foundations drilled and poured in preparation for the installation of poles; more than 2,000 feet of new sidewalks installed. And more, including the installation of an 11-foot wide, 6-foot tall, 300-foot- long storm box between 36th and 37th streets to mitigate stormwater concerns.

No wonder it’s been nearly impossible to drive the speed limit along Main.

But Klinkenberg says that traffic disruption, though still plentiful, has improved considerably from just a year ago. And he says there are even a few new businesses opening or considering that option. Besides, he says, some businesses appear immune to the construction issues. One seems to be the Main Street Laundry at 3324 Main where Coshawn Session, who was overseeing the needs of customers there one recent morning, says that business is doing well and even growing, despite customer complaints about getting to the location.

“We’re still here,” Klinkenberg reminds all of Kansas City about Main Street corridor businesses.

If you want an update from the project team itself, you are invited to a public meeting with the project team from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 22, at Haha’s Pizza, 3834 Main St.

But you don’t need to wait until then to pick up some pizza there.

This story was originally published February 10, 2023 at 6:30 AM.