Hung Ai Park and her husband He Su owned and operated Annieville Market in North Delta for 22 years. But after a slow decline in business over the past decade, and more recently the diversion of traffic away from their store to the South Fraser Perimeter Road (SFPR) in July, Park is now being forced into bankruptcy.
Business was slow but at least she was making ends meet, she said, until the closure of River Road between Knudson Road and 92A Avenue – due to SFPR construction – turned the road into a dead end.
He Su died in June, leaving Park, 64, alone to run the store. An average day nets her $50 to $100, she said. "I'm not making money; I can't make my electricity bill."
She sits alone, surrounded by half empty shelves. "This morning [since] I opened, nobody's come."
She stays open to sell off her stock and keep busy while she waits for a buyer for the building, which was listed in September.
Across the road, Tireman owner and operator Khuzi Adamjee is also struggling with slow business and what he says has been minimal and confusing information from the outset.
"It's hurting everybody here," he said. "We are just a very small community; we support each other. But with this, it's gone. Annieville is no longer the same."
He estimates 25% of his customers come from drive-by traffic, all but lost due to the SFPR diversion, which, once completed, will permanently redirect 80% of general traffic away from River Road, according to the SFPR website.
"October is normally my busiest month," Adamjee said. "This is the time when we try to make our money, so when things are slow in January and February, March, it helps us pay those bills. I don't know if I have that many months left, the way it's going right now."
He added that if he had been better notified of the scope of construction prior to the closure, he would have been prepared for the downturn.
"I know right now that even if I try to sell my business, nobody's going to buy it, because that's what they're going to see, is how much volume do you have? So I can't even sell it anymore; whatever I have achieved for the last seven years is going to go down the drain. How am I going to survive? Are they going to compensate me, are they going to do anything?"
In an email to Business in Vancouver, a public affairs officer for the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure wrote: "The SFPR project had one of the most extensive public consultation processes for a highway project of this size in the history of the province. … the contractor sent mail-outs, emails and went door-to-door to businesses in Annieville to provide information about the River Road detour and how it may affect them. … The project has not had discussions regarding compensation."
On the SFPR website completion of the River Road closure has been changed from "September 2013" to "Winter 2013." •
