Roughly a month ago, closures kicked off at a busy intersection in southern Overland Park.
The closures aim to facilitate efforts to reconstruct, widen and add toll lanes along a stretch of U.S. Highway 69 as part of the ongoing 69Express project.
Signs and traffic cones have continued to pop up where the highway intersects with 119th Street since then, with more closures taking effect this week.
The 119th Street interchange will fully close between August and October. But throughout the last month, some businesses at the nearby Highland Plaza shopping center say they’ve already felt the impacts of slowed traffic in the area.
What’s happening in this phase of 69Express?
Eventually, all interchanges onto and from U.S. 69 around 119th Street will close, as will 119th Street itself in this area. Specifically:
- The 119th Street ramp to northbound U.S. 69 closed in June and will remain closed into late October.
- The southbound U.S. 69 ramp to 119th Street also closed in June and will remain closed late into October.
- The northbound U.S. 69 ramp to 119th Street closed just this week, and it will be closed into October.
- The 119th Street ramp to southbound U.S. 69 will close next month, and it will be closed for about two months.
- A stretch of 119th Street between Switzer Road and Antioch Road around the highway will be closed entirely starting in August. That closure is also expected to last about two months.
During this portion of the project, the Kansas Department of Transportation is rebuilding the ramps, 69Express Project Director Steve Rockers told the Post.
Crews will also be completely regrading 119th Street around this interchange, lowering it a few feet below its current position.
All that work — and all the moving parts associated with it — would make it hard to do a piece-by-piece approach for this portion of the project, officials say.
“We don’t take these closures lightly,” Rockers said.
Additionally, he said crews can save time by doing all of the work at once instead of lane-by-lane, allowing for a more timely completion of this part of the broader 69Express project.
“We can do this quicker if we shut it completely down,” Rockers said. “If we phased it … it would take even longer.”
Plus, phasing the work could pose additional safety risks for drivers traveling in the area and construction crews who are working there. By taking cars and other vehicles out of the mix, the work zone will be safer, Rockers said in a follow-up email.
“It’s not business as usual”
Throughout the last month or so, multiple businesses at Highland Plaza say the decrease in traffic has resulted in fewer customers coming through their doors.
Zubair Shah, manager at Indian and Pakistani restaurant Kababesh Grill, said his restaurant has seen less foot traffic. From the customers that have been in, he said he’s heard complaints about access to the shopping center.
“Lots of customers mentioned that they’ve had difficulty reaching here,” he said. “Before, there was easy access to the restaurant. Now they have difficulties.”
Kababesh has operated out of the Highland Plaza for roughly 20 years. In June, Shah said, it looked like the restaurant was on track to bring in the same amount of business as its previous summers.
Now, he said, he foresees a decrease in revenue.
“It is not business as usual,” he said. “Right now, we are losing business.”
Jay and Vila Ramkumar, owners of the Chatime tea shop at Highland Plaza, voiced similar concerns. They say it’s been a slow summer so far, during what is normally a popular time for bubble tea.
Due to the slowdown in business, the couple said they’ve had to cut back employee hours by roughly 33% this summer.
“We’ve probably seen a 30% decrease in sales so far since it’s been going on,” Jay said at the beginning of July. “Summers are our busy months, and we really rely on (summer) sales to cover the winter months when we’re slower.”
Vila Ramkumar, who oversees most of the day-to-day operations at Chatime, said summer is typically so busy that the shop extends its hours during those months. In contrast, this summer has the Ramkumars wondering what their hours will look like later in the year.
“If (during) the summer we cannot make anything, what can we expect with the winter coming?” she said.
A few doors down at TT Asian Grocery, Telson Thomas had also started to see a slight dip in revenue by the beginning of July, especially compared to this time last year.
He doesn’t expect his longtime market to take much more of a hit than that, he said, due to the grab-and-go nature of the business and the fact that his regular customers often come in for specific specialty items that he stocks.
But Thomas still posted about the upcoming closures on his store’s social media pages earlier this summer, to keep customers informed. He’s not necessarily bringing in new customers right now, he said, but his current regulars have continued to stop in.
“I’ve been here for close to 15 years,” he said. “We’re in general not a super busy place, but we’ve had a loyal following for a long time.”
Full closures will continue for two more months
In a newsletter earlier this summer, the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce put out a call to action encouraging residents to lend extra support to Highland Plaza businesses during the closures.
Rockers, the project director from KDOT, said signs will also be posted in the area surrounding the 119th Street work zone guiding motorists to the shopping center.
With the gradual expansion of U.S. Highway 69, business owners hope the eventual increase in traffic ultimately means good things for their operations.
“It will be a positive effect, of course, no question about it,” Shah from Kababesh Grill said. “But during the period of closure, it is affecting the business.”
For now, though, they hope to keep customer traffic as high as it can be while car traffic comes to a halt over the next several weeks.
“Only time will tell,” Jay Ramkumar from Chatime said. “Once you lose a customer, it’s five times the effort to get them back, right? So that is our concern.”
Looking ahead:
- As of this summer, the 69Express project is moving ahead on schedule, Rockers said, and more work is to come.
- Next year, construction work will be focused primarily north of Antioch.
- KDOT expects the express toll lanes to be constructed by the end of 2025 and in use by 2026.
- Down the line, crews will completely overhaul the U.S. 69 interchange at 167th Street.
- In the meantime, KDOT encourages individuals who live, work or travel frequently in this area to sign up for text alerts and email blasts to stay up to date.
- “I know it’s frustrating, but my message is that you have to be patient; the end is near,” Rockers said.
Kaylie McLaughlin also contributed reporting to this story.
