In colder parts of the country there’s an old saying: When it comes to driving, there are two seasons — winter and construction.

So, right now, at the height of summer, it is road construction season. Which also means it’s road closure season. 

When communities upgrade infrastructure and repave roads, residents and businesses get the benefits when construction’s complete. But during the construction process, nearby businesses can pay a pretty significant short-term cost.

That’s playing out right now in Burlington, Vermont, where Main Street, through the heart of the small city’s downtown, is a construction zone.

Several blocks lined with small shops, restaurants, and venues are closed to car traffic. Sidewalks are torn up too. In the middle of the street, crews have been working to replace a 150-year-old sewer that’s 30 feet underground.

It’s been like this for well over a year now, and construction is supposed to continue for at least another year.

“It feels like a wasteland instead of a lively downtown block,” Main Street resident Rae Taylor-Burns said as she headed to her apartment along the gravel sidewalk.

For businesses along the thoroughfare, that change has hit the bottom line.

“We went from being the best location in Burlington to the worst location in Burlington overnight,” said Cara Tobin, co-owner of Honey Road, an upscale Mediterranean restaurant on Main Street. Tobin estimates her restaurant’s revenue has declined by 20 to 30% during construction.

“The restaurant industry already operates on really small margins. Everyone knows that,” she said. “So to lose 20 to 30% of our revenue was huge.”

Tobin said she no longer counts on walk-in customers. She’s closed her patio seating, taken out loans and cut her own pay. 

Down the block, the music venue Nectar’s, famous for being the place where the band Phish made a name for themselves, has closed for the summer. Two doors down from Nectar’s, a breakfast place called The Cafe HOT has cut back too, as a high fence and loud construction equipment has surrounded its storefront.

“It got to a point where we had to lay off staff,” said co-owner Travis Walker-Hodkin, “got to a point where we reduced from a seven-day schedule to a five-day schedule.” He thinks the city is harming Main Street businesses as the construction project drags on.

“It seems like there's a huge sacrifice being asked of this city for the future of this city, and the small businesses are receiving the bill,” he said.

There’s some evidence that large projects like this can have lasting effects on small businesses.

Yingling Fan, a professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Minnesota,  conducted a study in 2024 on the impact of highway construction projects on nearby businesses. She found that even after a project ends, some businesses continue to see lower revenue, particularly restaurants.

“Some of the previous customers may identify new businesses to visit [during construction], and are no longer going to return as customers to some of those smaller businesses,” she said.

But avoiding impacts on businesses entirely during a road construction project is almost impossible, according to Dominick Longobardi, president of the American Public Works Association.

“Unfortunately, there's always some pain in all of these projects, no matter what you do. Especially if they're much bigger,” he said.

The best way to minimize that pain, Longobardi said, is to communicate the overall goal of a project to business owners and residents.

“Make sure that the people know while it's a short term inconvenience, the benefits, you hope, are planned out to be long term.”

In Burlington, the city’s public works director, Chapin Spencer, has been trying to make that case: That digging up Main Street now will pay dividends down the line.

“During my lifetime, we will not need to touch these sewer or water mains again,” he said. “That will allow the future vitality of this city for many, many years.”

In the meantime, Spencer said the city government has been trying to help businesses. Its offered some interest-free loans, free parking downtown, hired a communications manager and set up a marketing campaign. And soon, parts of Main Street will re-open to car traffic on nights and weekends. Beginning in November, the city plans to allow vehicle traffic on Main Street 24/7 as work pauses for the winter, Spencer said.

Still, some business owners in the area feel like the city’s communication efforts throughout the project have fallen short, making it difficult for them to plan around the construction.

But Cara Tobin, owner of the restaurant Honey Road, said she’s starting to see signs that the disruption will eventually end.

“Parts of Main Street just south of us, you can see the sidewalks starting to be done and the roads being paved, and you get this little, like, glimmer of hope,” she said. “You're like, ‘oh yeah, when this is done, it's gonna be nice.’”

The question, she said, is whether her restaurant, and the neighboring businesses, can survive until then.