Atascadero is in middle of massive downtown renovation. But is construction slowing business?
Driving down the main drag of El Camino Real in Atascadero, commuters are met with countless construction cones, constantly changing one-lane roads, detours and stop-and-go traffic directives.
The current construction in downtown Atascadero is a product of the city’s downtown safety and beautification efforts which kick-started in June.
Come this summer, the city will enjoy a fully renovated El Camino Real with added car and bike parking, hanging street lights, a center road divider, pedestrian cross walks and grand entry gates into downtown.
The city’s small businesses were generally excited for the final product, but with some store owners going on two years of dealing with off-and-on construction around their storefronts, the wait has very nearly been too much to handle.
“For me, that construction has hands-down been detrimental,” downtown business owner Tiffani Pryor told The Tribune.
Pryor owns Black Sheep, a vintage clothing store on Entrada Avenue, which was under construction in 2023 before the El Camino Real project. She said downtown foot traffic has gone down significantly since then.
“For our street, it’s been two years in a row,” Pryor said.
At first it was due to the road work on Entrada, but even with the side street back open, the construction on El Camino dissuades people from coming downtown altogether, she said.
Matthew Corning, who opened A-Town Chop Shop on El Camino a year before construction started, also said foot traffic has decreased.
“I think the construction downtown has been a huge deterrent for people to come downtown,” Corning told The Tribune. “A lot of people are going to just wait until the project is finished.”
Corning said that most of the businesses he’s spoken to downtown have suffered revenue losses of 15% or 20% since the El Camino construction started.
“I think a lot of the businesses, we’re really excited about what’s to come in May, but I think a lot are very concerned they won’t be around to be able to take advantage of the new, beautiful downtown area,” Corning said.
Similarly, Pryor claimed to have friends who went out of business on Entrada due to the construction in 2023.
Even so, she is sympathetic to the city and said she supports the work.
“It’s not an easy project,” Pryor said. “I think they’ve managed it the best they could, but it was always going to have a negative impact on small businesses.”
As a part of its Reality Check series, The Tribune spoke to multiple downtown Atascadero small business owners about how the ongoing construction has impacted their operations.
Most said that while city has made meaningful efforts to try and alleviate the strain construction has placed on its local businesses, some impacts are simply unavoidable.
“We have to get through this, but hopefully it’s going to benefit us a thousand times more when its done,” Pryor said.
How have businesses on El Camino fared amid construction?
The current construction on El Camino Real — officially dubbed the El Camino Real Downtown Safety and Parking Enhancement Project — began on June 6, the day before school got out for the summer.
If all goes according to plan, it should be finished within a year of starting.
“We’re hoping to be done by late spring, early summer,” Atascadero City Manager Jim Lewis told The Tribune. “So May, June, done. And we’re already into February, so we’re rolling.”
When all is said and done, the project will have added 251 new parking spots, bike parking, hanging pendant-shaped street lights, a center divider full of trees and greenery, paved pedestrian crosswalks and grand entry gates at either end of downtown on El Camino Real.
Most business owners appreciate that a beautiful new downtown will be for the better, with added parking and pedestrian routes helping to boost their foot traffic, but the interim has been hard on them.
Sebastian Cornejo, the general manager of Sylvester’s Burgers on El Camino, said the construction has impacted them “not very awesomely.”
“There’s like no parking” for their customers, he told The Tribune. “Our main issue is all the construction workers like to park on the main strip,” blocking spaces shoppers would usually park in, he said.
The worst time is around 3 p.m. when school gets out and traffic builds-up downtown, Cornejo said.
Lewis was well aware of this issue.
He said the city worked with the school district to identify three different alternative school driving routes and communicate them to parents in an effort to mitigate traffic on El Camino. Lewis even went so far as to stand outside on the first day of school to direct traffic and inform families, he said.
“We’ve had access to every driveway in every business all the time,” Lewis said.
The nearly $12 million downtown beautification project has several funding sources, including $4.6 million from Atascadero’s General Fund, a $3 million state grant, a $2.5 million grant from the San Luis Obispo County of Governments and another $1.1 million from the city’s Wastewater Fund, according to Atascadero Public Works analyst Ryan Betz.
All of the hardscape on the project is already finished — which includes the curb, gutter and sidewalk improvements — as well as work on the planters in the middle road divider up to Sunken Gardens from the south, Lewis said. Soon, they’ll finish the same work from East Mall to Traffic Way.
Weather permitting, pavement on the center divider and crosswalks will go in during February and April. The next big phase of work will be to complete the road medians from Traffic Way to Rosario Ave, Lewis said.
The project has had no major delays, with the contractors and construction crew scheduled to work every day this year but Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Lewis said.
As of Feb. 6, only ten work days have been missed due to weather impacts, city spokesperson Terrie Banish told The Tribune.
“We’re really optimistic to be done before school ends,” Lewis said. “For this level of project to be done in a year or less is incredible.”
But Cornejo is not as optimistic.
“I don’t think they’re gonna be done for a while,” he said. “I’ve heard a bunch of different deadlines.”
What about businesses on Entrada?
The El Camino Real construction is not the only work that has caused downtown road closures in recent years.
In 2023, the city dug up and then repaved Entrada Avenue, the downtown side street that branches off the now encumbered El Camino Real, as part of its Downtown District Paving Project. The $2 million project also fixed up Lewis Avenue, Palma Avenue, a few city alleys, West and East Mall and added 13 parking spots on Entrada.
The repaving project ran from November 2023 to April 2024, with Entrada completed as one of the first items of work in November, Banish said. But the street was also partially closed down over the summer before repaving while the Atascadero Mutual Water Company replaced its aging water main below the road.
Road work began in early July 2023 and lasted until mid-August of the same year, but the road was kept open and passable the whole time, with construction taking place in sections, water company General Manager John Neil told The Tribune. He said parking was impacted, but the road was driveable the whole summer.
Entrada is lined with small businesses, from retail to restaurants and more. Many of them said their business troubles coincided with the start of the paving project.
“It has been rough,” Emilie Goldstein, who owns two businesses on Entrada, told The Tribune. “Dealing with one closure or one stretch would be one thing, but were going on two straight years of this.”
Goldstein opened Bramble Pie Company on Entrada in May 2021, and later JonnyBoy’s Bagelry in 2024, right between the end of the Entrada paving project and the start of the work on El Camino Real.
“I didn’t realize the full extent of the construction when I signed the lease,” Goldstein said. “It’s just one of those things that you think, on El Camino, it’s not going to impact us.”
She said the parking on Entrada is better now that it’s open, but getting there is still an issue. The lanes on El Camino Real seem to change daily, she said, confusing drivers and leading people to avoid downtown altogether.
“Regular customers tell me ‘I don’t go downtown anymore because I don’t want to deal with it,’” Goldstein said.
She has hope for how the work will benefit downtown businesses when the construction is complete, but said, “we are holding on by the skin of our teeth right now.”
Some others said they haven’t felt the same pressure.
Marin Wolgamott, who opened Marin’s Vineyard on Entrada in mid-August, hasn’t felt like construction on El Camino has negatively impacted her business.
“Business has been great and we have been well received by many locals,” she told The Tribune, “While I am half a block removed from the main construction, I haven’t seen a decrease of customers since opening and nobody has commented on it deterring them.”
Notably, most of the tasting room’s business hours fall during the weekend when construction is on pause, so noise and dust are not a problem for customers who enjoy Marin’s street-facing outside patio, she said.
“I feel fortunate that I haven’t been impacted by their disturbances,” Wolgamott said.
Goldstein was among the many business owners who have been impressed by the city’s communication with its business owners through years of construction, but at least one person said they received little-to-no warning beforehand the work on Entrada began.
“They dug up our entire street the first week of July, with just two weeks notice,” Farron Day, owner of clothing shop Farron Elizabeth, told The Tribune. The water company notified business owners, not the city, Day said.
Lewis said the city buttoned up roadwork on Entrada for the holidays and communicated with businesses owners to the best of its ability, sending out notices and holding informational meetings. They even tried to work with individual business owners to move roadwork away from their storefronts on busy shopping days, he said.
“Some people are just gonna be frustrated and I can’t help that,” Lewis said. “We can do everything we can to be clear in our communication, get the job done as quick as we can finish, when we say we’ll finish. Those are all the things the city can do.”
Day is coming up on her ten year anniversary of opening Farron Elizabeth. She said she has always been in support of the El Camino project, but that it has taken a huge toll on businesses.
“We got hit really hard,” Day said. “It put people out of business,” she claimed about the Entrada paving project, but did not name which businesses out of respect for their privacy. Her own sales were down significantly at one point, she said.
The real nail in the coffin, though, was that the construction on Entrada came right on the tail of the atmospheric river storms of winter 2023 that flooded many stores and intermittently closed them during the winter, including hers.
“It just killed business,” Day said.
As far as Lewis was aware, no businesses on Entrada were lost due to construction impacts, and any that closed or moved did so for personal reasons, he said.
Kula Vineyards moved from its previous location on Entrada into a bigger space on El Camino Real to accommodate their growing business after the start of construction in mid-August, owner Chris Williams told The Tribune.
Both Indigo Social Studio, previously Indigo Clothing, and Baby’s Babble also moved from Entrada to El Camino, but neither business immediately responded to a request for comment. Fossil Wine Bar and Pair With Dead Oak brewery permanently closed on Entrada in recent years, but also could not be reached for comment.
“Businesses close for a lot of reasons,” including owners retiring or relocating to larger stores, but what really matters are vacancies, Lewis said.
Atascadero’s most recent retail vacancy rate was a decade-high of 9.8% in 2022. This number is city-wide and is not necessarily representative of Entrada specifically, however.
Are Atascadero’s efforts to help out its small businesses working?
The vast majority of business owners The Tribune spoke to credited the city for its communication efforts throughout the El Camino construction project.
The city sends weekly project update emails and an in-person representative makes rounds to businesses when major updates or delays happen, Atascadero Deputy Director of Economic Development Loreli Cappel told The Tribune. The project website is also updated weekly with road closures.
So far, the city has hosted four in-person town hall meetings for the El Camino project, Cappel said.
The city has also made efforts to boost economic activity and foot traffic downtown.
The Atascadero Chamber of Commerce generated nearly $100,000 in profit for small businesses through two local rewards initiatives in which shoppers who spent $100 or more at select downtown businesses earned $20 gift cards to spend there.
The Shop Downtown Construction Program which ran from July 22 until October raised $61,436, while the Shop Local Bonus Program, which ran from the day after Thanksgiving to Dec. 31, raised $38,000, Chamber of Commerce administrative assistant Karina Velazquez told The Tribune.
Betz, the city’s public works analyst, also runs the El Camino Spotlight, a free advertisement initiative to film online videos promoting El Camino business. Three videos are currently posted on the Shop Downtown Atascadero website highlighting the 805 Boardshop, axe throwing at Corning’s A-town Chop Shop and Andy’s Awesome Arcade.
For some, these efforts to boost the local economy have helped.
Manager Kylee Carabeo said the Street Side Ale House and Eatery on El Camino wasn’t hit as hard by the construction, and the city has compensated for the small dip in foot traffic by hosting events in the Sunken Gardens that bring more people downtown, such as Fall Fest in November and Winter Wonderland in December.
But some business owners feel that most of the city’s events actually do little to help.
Day, the owner of Farron Elizabeth, said that while events like Sip and Shop have always been beneficial to downtown businesses, other seasonal events like Fall Fest and Winter Wonderland hurt more than they help.
Day said the Fall Festival in particular drew people to the Sunken Garden’s for the city-provided food stands, outside vendors and activities, but not to their storefronts the next block over.
If anything, the event just clogged up parking on Entrada and El Camino with people heading to the Sunken Gardens, she said.
“They’re shutting down more streets,” around peak holiday shopping seasons, Day said about the Fall Festival. “They’re even making it more difficult.”
Like her neighboring business owners, Day is looking forward to the El Camino project being complete.
“I believe that this is going to help downtown Atascadero really flourish,” Day said. “My feeling is that when the project is complete, it will be extremely beneficial to downtown.”
