But for small businesses and neighbors, the project has been a slow-motion disaster. According to the project’s website, the first segment was completed on time and on budget in 2021. But it has taken almost three years for the second segment to finish, and the deadline of fall 2024 feels, to most neighborhood dwellers, like a pipe dream. In the meantime, businesses have suffered from lost customers, building damages, broken plumbing and more, and merchants say they feel abandoned and forgotten by the city.
“I know the struggles of the Taraval merchants,” said Mike Farrah, an aide to Supervisor Myrna Melgar, whose district includes the current construction zone. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Farrah lives a few blocks from Taraval and said he has personally spent thousands of dollars with local businesses in an attempt to support the merchants. Supervisor Melgar could not be reached for comment in time for publication.
