From Ion installation to King Street streetscape improvements, road construction has been a constant presence in uptown Waterloo over the last few summers.

While plenty of businesses have arrived in and departed the uptown core during the seemingly never-ending construction, people who watch the area closely say there haven’t been any more comings and goings than usual.

“We haven’t lost any more than we would have in a typical year,” Uptown Waterloo BIA chair Jeff Zavitz said in an interview.

According to the BIA’s numbers, 15 uptown businesses have closed thus far in 2017. Fourteen others have opened their doors, and three restaurants claim to be opening in the near future.

One of those three is Lou Dawgs, which will be the first Waterloo Region location of a chain specializing in southern BBQ food and live music.

Chain founder Daryl D’Souza said he made the decision to open a restaurant in Waterloo over Kitchener after taking a walk around the uptown core and finding his empty storefront.

“While it was kind of sad to see that turnover … I saw it as a great opportunity for us to drive into the Waterloo community,” he says.

Other restaurants have already opened their doors. That’s the case with McCabe’s, which added a Waterloo location to its roster of Kitchener, Guelph and London last week.

The timing was an intentional attempt to attract people visiting the area for the Uptown Waterloo Jazz Festival.

“It’s a great, great area and we’re really enjoying being here,” says Rob Howie of McCabe’s.

Zavitz says he expects people to enjoy a reinvigorated uptown core with new restaurants and businesses, wider sidewalks including sidewalk patios, new lighting features and other improvements – once the construction wraps up, at least.

“We’re at the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ phase now,” he says.

It’s not just diners, shoppers and tourists benefiting from the changes either.

City officials say the uptown area has added space for more than 1,000 jobs over the past 18 months, although the majority of those are “potential jobs” that haven’t actually been created yet.

With reporting by Abigail Bimman