Road construction on lower Broadway officially comes to an end with celebration

On Saturday, there will be a block party on lower Broadway to celebrate the corridor’s official reopening after a three-year road construction project.

Business owners in the area say the construction diminished foot traffic and hurt business.

“We definitely saw a huge decline during all the construction. There was days we had to completely shut down, there was like a few weeks where we had to completely shut down,” said James DuBois, owner of QuickDraw Coffee.

DuBois says it’s about time the road construction on lower Broadway ended. The project lasted three years because the lower Broadway corridor needed some major upgrades.

“Above the roadway, wider sidewalk, landscaping, a lot pavement and also low impact development, and honestly, parking, traffic signal, street lighting, pedestrian lighting, you name it,” said, Razi Hosseini, Director of San Antonio Public Works.

This weekend’s event brings hope for DuBois’ business, and he hopes the City of San Antonio will continue working on driving foot traffic back.

“With it opening up, we’re pretty excited but we’re still behind the curve in the business that we didn’t have for those several years, you know?” said DuBois.

Hosseini said, now that the makeover is complete, several organizations will be teaming up to drive people to the corridor to see the improvements firsthand.

“They are working with Centro and we will work with them to make sure we have some major announcement and whatever marketing required to bring people back for this corridor,” said Hosseini.

We wanted to ask if a marketing plan was enough to get these businesses the help they need. The organization in charge didn't back to us.

Richard Bocanegra and James Gonzaba will be opening 'La Honky Tonk' on lower Broadway before the year is over and they both said the upgrades on lower Broadway are bringing the corridor endless potential that they’re sure the City of San Antonio will help highlight.

“Little by little, people are getting aware of the opening so yes, we have seen more traffic, and I think with the help of the city pushing that Broadway is open because it had such a tarnished name for so long,” said Bocanegra.