Blaming others for your own failures is a sickness.

Giving them money during road construction is without precedent (they are not at the edge of a sea). They sound very grateful.

It's mindboggling to me that the City could take so long to replace a water main and widen the sidewalks along ... what, a mile, mile-and-a-half stretch? Is the project overseen by the same people that are building the Brooklyn Street light-rail station at a snail's pace? Are there Roman sewers and medieval catacombs that they have to carefully maneuver around? Shit, the French would have finished this project by now.

By the way, who'd like to join a petition to have the City tear up the road for a half mile on either side in front of wherever James hushmoney (@1) lives and works for, say, two or three years, so we can listen to him blaming others for his own failures?

Isn't this sort of old news? According to the city's website, 23rd has been open from Jackson to Cherry as of "early June", and has been open from Cherry to Union since July 27th.

Here's the schedule.....
Zone A - S Jackson St to E Cherry St: June 2015 – spring 2016; major activities completed; crews will finish several final punch list items before project completion
Zone B - E Cherry St to E Union St: November 30, 2015 – July 2016; crews reopened Zone B to two-way traffic on July 27 and will complete intermittent work with two-way traffic maintained through project completion
Zone C - E Union St to E John St: June 1, 2016 – early 2017; current detour

Yeah, I'd love to hear an interview with the project manager. It's hard for to believe that the same project done in a different neighbourhood would have been planned with this schedule, but... I'll listen.

@3: Catalina -- the information you provide is correct, and south of Union traffic is open both ways. But the intersection of Union/23rd is still a total cluster (I live within a block of there and walk by and see it every day). Cars are being detoured off 23rd at Union, and I see why the businesses are still struggling. That block still very much feels like a construction zone.

I think it was/is the water main that did it. When you think of the growth along that street (particularly up towards Madison) and a 100 year old water main, you can imagine that they needed a much bigger capacity pipe. And then every service along the street having to be disconnected from the old pipe and hooked up to the new one, before you can even start paving.

As for this being some sort of conspiracy, I think that's the product of over-active imaginations. We tore up Third Avenue for blocks and Pine Street from Third to Eighth for the bus tunnel. And I mean tore up: They dug a giant ditch to build that tunnel, from sidewalk to sidewalk. Downtown was a hopeless mess for years because of it, and people screamed bloody murder. I don't recall if the businesses on Third were given anything. They might have, because I think there were federal dollars involved.

The Stranger reported First Cup Coffee as having closed up because of all the construction/no business in May, did it re-open?

First Cup Coffee is surrounded by a parking lot with TWO entrances that have been accessible throughout this project. Something tells me that the liquor store that shares this same lot isn't having the same problems. I wonder why.
But, you know, go ahead and keep trying to make this into something.
Next story: The Unbelievable Yet Somehow Shady Success of the Legal Pot Shop ACROSS THE STREET.