The City of Windsor is responding to concerns from a local business owner about road construction affecting his sales.
The owner of Fred's Farm Fresh on Huron Church Rd. is blaming the construction for a 10% drop in sales because it is difficult to access his business.
Fred Bouzide suggested construction work take place 24-7 to complete the work sooner and he is looking for some compensation.
But City Engineer Mark Winterton says 24-7 work is costly.
"You do pay a substantial premium for doing that," he says. "There are also safety issues related to working at night that you have to compensate for."
He points out the city has very restrictive budgets and it tries to do as much as possible with limited resources so putting more manpower on a minor collector road project wouldn't make sense.
Winterton is referring to Northwood, which runs behind Fred's Farm fresh.
He adds the time to do this type of work is now.
"Traffic volumes are down substantially in August and in September, they go up a lot in September and last year we were doing another section of Northwood and we received a fair number of complaints, justifiably, that we were doing it during school."
As for compensating businesses for lost sales, Winterton says the city does not compensate and instead asks for patience.
Bouzide also expressed concerns about the slow pace of work for the westbound EC Row Expressway off-ramp at Huron Church, but Winterton says that is a Ministry of Transportation project.