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Adam Jones, owner of Hollister’s Harvest Time Roadhouse, had been looking forward to the reopening of the Union/Mitchell Road intersection on Hwy 156. Since Caltrans closed the access to Union Road on Aug. 15 to finish the newly built roadway between San Juan Bautista and Hollister, Jones has lost customers who were reluctant or unable to navigate the lengthy detour to his restaurant at the corner of 156 and Mitchell Road.
“At first,” Jones said, “Caltrans told me ‘shutting Union Road down will not affect your business very much.’ I told them, ‘I hope you’re correct. But I don’t see it the same way you do.’”
Before the closure, the Roadhouse’s midday business was fueled by serving the employees from nearby Pacific Scientific and construction workers from the San Juan Oaks development. After the closure, Jones said, he would pray for just a couple of people to come in for lunch.
“I went over and talked to some of the employees,” Jones said, “and they told me, ‘You know, we’re all hourly. We got one hour for our lunch, and we figured out we could not make it with the detour to your place, eat lunch and then get back to work on time.”
Surviving through large numbers of loyal customers on the weekends, Jones was looking forward to the planned Oct. 11 reopening of Union Road, allowing traffic to flow again from there to his restaurant.
Then, a few weeks ago, he discovered that Mitchell Road would close for two months on the day Union opened. This would cut off direct access to the Roadhouse from Hwy 156, requiring customers to detour through the new roundabout at Bixby Road and turn onto Freitas Road to finally reach Mitchell Road.
Jones said the prospect was more than daunting. The loss of business due to the Union Road closure had already cost him two employees, and he was concerned about having to run on an even thinner margin.
“My waitresses are mostly paid with tips,” he said. “We’ve slowed down so much, and people don’t realize our people work and live paycheck to paycheck. When your check significantly drops, it gets really hard on them to pay their bills.”
The drop in business has also led Jones’ suppliers to downgrade his discount on goods and cut the frequency of his deliveries.
“I went from Platinum Member with Performance Foodservice and Cisco to Gold Member,” he said. “I am only getting food once a week instead of twice a week, which makes it hard for you to know what you will need by the weekend. And that goes for beer, alcohol, toilet paper, soap—everything.”
Jones said that he had initially been assured of some degree of compensation for the losses his business would suffer.
“Someone from Caltrans said to keep all your numbers,” Jones said, “because, at the end of this, we’ll compare the first six months to the last six months and try to make you whole.”
He was later informed that Caltrans policy does not allow compensation for business losses.
“I was told that if they paid attention to me, they would have to pay attention to everyone else who wanted to make a claim,” Jones said. “In fact, Terry Thompson from Caltrans basically told me I should seek legal counsel.”
BenitoLink contacted Thompson, the manager for the 156 project, and Caltrans District 5 Public Information Officer Heidi Crawford to determine whether Jones was entitled to compensation.
Crawford replied, “Caltrans does not offer compensation to businesses as a result of our construction activities. The project team continues to meet with the management of this restaurant, so they are aware of current and future construction activities.”
Crawford also said that Caltrans has shortened the duration of the Mitchell Road closure and is looking at alternate ways to mitigate the length of this closure.
Thompson did not reply, but Caltrans District 5 Public-Legislative Affairs Manager Jim Shivers wrote, “The team received an email from Terry Thompson of our staff this afternoon, and she confirms there was no promise of compensation.”
Jones said he is being stoic about the situation and hopes that he and his staff will endure what seems to be a problematic two months of construction. He said one bright spot is that the Teichert Construction crew told him that they would push as hard as possible to turn eight weeks into five.
“I am also a big-picture guy,” he said. “I know when this road is fixed, it will help everybody around here. At the same time, I can’t spend so much money trying to stay open that I lose my business, too.”
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