Merchants in St. Jacobs say they’re glad a lengthy construction project is about to come to an end – even if it hasn’t been the drain on their business that some of them first feared.

“It hasn’t been bad at all,” says Nancy Boudreau, owner of the La Crème clothing store.

“People come to find us. They’re willing to go on some back streets to get here.”

Parts of the St. Jacobs downtown were torn up in 2016 for roadwork. The rest of the core saw construction this year.

According to Ian Young, who is managing the project for the Region of Waterloo, all of the region’s underground work in St. Jacobs is finished.

Work is now turning to the underground utility lines of Bell, which owns CTV Kitchener, and Rogers.

“Once that’s complete, we’ll be able to complete our base asphalt, and move on to the surface asphalt stage and finish the project,” Young said in an interview.

All told, construction is expected to finish by the end of September – a few weeks later than initially planned. Young blames the delays on the Bell and Rogers utility work taking longer than expected, as well as a decision to do the final coating of asphalt in 2017 rather than 2018.

Boudreau, who says her store saw its sales figures increase in 2016 and again in 2017, says she’ll still be glad to see the work done.

“It’s going to make it easier for us to get to work and our customers to get here,” she says.

Across the street at Tea, Earth and Sky, owner Steve Ferguson has similar thoughts.

He too has found himself inconvenienced by the road closures. He too hasn’t seen much of an impact on his sales figures.

“As much as people think it’s a negative impact, it hasn’t been,” he says.

“It’s gone well for us.”

Over at Red Wind Studio, owner Tracey Doogan-Benoit has a slightly different perspective.

She only opened her business in late 2016, and suspects that 2017 has been a little tougher than 2016 would have been due to where the construction is happening – at either end of the core, rather than in the middle.

“It’s been quite slow, but it’s starting to open up now,” she says.

The road reconstruction project has a total cost of slightly less than $5 million.

With reporting by Natalie van Rooy