Davenport City Council members laid out revisions on the two-way conversion project timeline, leaving some business owners unhappy about the situation.

Construction on the project is scheduled to start in 2024, but construction is already happening on 3rd St. in downtown Davenport. “My hope is that they have feelings for what we’re going through as a business,” Bill Collins, owner of Me & Billy, said. “These projects take so long. It’s hard to manage the length of these projects. When people just don’t walk in the door, it makes things rather difficult.”

Collins has had to deal with construction for most of this summer, with work being done on N. Main St. Lanes have also been blocked in front of Me & Billy on 3rd St. “It affects day to day business, and that’s really difficult to manage,” Collins said. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Monika McKown, owner of Boozie’s Bar and Grill on 3rd St., said she is frustrated with the current and future plans of construction projects that will affect her business and her employees’ income. “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it,” McKown said. “There’s no point in doing it. Just from the sidewalk construction that has been going on now in front of our business, it has decreased our sales, and the parking has gotten worse.”

Gwendolyn Lee, former chair of the Downtown Davenport Partnership, owns a business on 3rd St., believes the two way streets will help the city in the long run.”It can be annoying if there is limited parking or a little bit of a detour,” Lee said. “I think a lot of us are in it for the bigger picture, and what’s the downtown we want to look like in the next five, ten, twenty years.”

Lee said the project has a target construction year of 2024 and 2025 because of federal grant dollars applying to just that time frame.