Main Street Sewering Delayed To January

ORLEANS – At Nauset Farms, the holiday season brings in more business than at any other time of the year. Even more than the Fourth of July, noted owner Peter Gori.

So when Gori learned recently that a portion of Main Street right by his store was going to be closed for sewer work for two weeks leading up to Christmas, worry set in.

“I’ve been following the project, and I was surprised,” Gori said of the town’s plan to work on Main Street this month.

Sewer mains were due to be installed on a stretch of Main Street from Tonset Road to Meetinghouse Road starting this week. But those plans have been delayed until after Jan. 1 in light of concerns from the Orleans Chamber of Commerce about how the timing of the work would impact small businesses in the area.

The closure would have resulted in traffic being rerouted around the proposed sewer area up Tonset Road and down Meetinghouse Road, a distance of about a mile. Instead, Kevin Galligan of the select board said Monday that work will be done on side streets off of Main Street, including Loomis Lane, Cheney Road and Monument Road out to Pond Road.

There are six local retailers and restaurants in the proposed Main Street stretch, as well as a number of other professional offices, said Judy Lindahl, the chamber’s executive director. She estimated that closing Main Street as originally planned would have cumulatively cost local businesses between $250,000 and $500,000 in holiday revenue.

“It was going to destroy any Christmas revenue that these people had,” she said last week before plans to sewer the area were delayed.

Lindahl said she and other chamber members were notified just before Thanksgiving of the proposed Main Street work, prompting her to ask the town to request that the project contractor, C.C. Construction, delay the work until after Jan. 1.

“They were not engaging with the Orleans Chamber of Commerce,” she said of the town. “They were not engaging at all with the owners of these businesses. So I literally had to go down to the town manager and Kevin Galligan and say, ‘We need to talk.’”

Gori said the closure would have been detrimental, and not just in terms of the significant business his store historically does filling orders during the holiday season. He said the closure could have potentially jeopardized the business’ ability to operate in the offseason. He estimated that the store takes in 25 deliveries a week in the offseason, and those deliveries could be complicated by a road closure and detour.

“It’s the difference between remaining open during the winter and not, and the town needs to understand that,” he said.

Galligan said the town will incur some small expense in the form of a project change order by putting off the Main Street work. But he said it’s a small cost to pay to address the needs of local businesses in the area.

“When the chamber said this is going to really affect people being able to get to businesses, I see it,” Galligan said. “We said to the contractor ‘Can you adjust your work so you can move crews to maybe side streets like Monument Road?’ And that’s what they’re doing.”

News that the work is being delayed was met with relief by the chamber, Lindahl said. But the situation has brought to the surface communication issues between the chamber, the town and the contractor that need sorting out in the longer term. In particular, Lindahl said there needs to be a better understanding that for many local merchants, there’s still business to be done in town outside of the busy summer season.

“A common response in town hall is ‘We’re in the offseason,’” she said. “We’re not in the offseason.”

On Tuesday, a meeting was held at town hall with representatives from the chamber and local businesses, the town and C.C. Construction. The meeting was designed to open up those lines of communication and get all parties on the same page regarding future sewer scheduling and planning.

“It’s just to overview the project in a little more detail, because this is a two-year endeavor,” Galligan said prior to the meeting. “Certainly there won’t be any work in the summer, and we’ll tell them that. But we want to let them know how the project is laid out, what the contractor’s plan for doing work is, and they’ll hear it first hand.”

Galligan said Monday while the town has been looping the chamber in on its sewer communications, there’s still room for improvement.

“I have a feeling they’re going to say ‘Can you just give us a summary paragraph of what’s open, what’s closed?’ I’m going to be an advocate for making much clearer the communication that goes out.”

Email Ryan Bray at ryan@capecodchronicle.com