The City of Gig Harbor hosted the second of two public meetings last week that focused on plans to launch a $4.2 million construction project designed to improve the street infrastructure of Point Fosdick Drive NW and 56th Street.

The work is scheduled to begin May 18 and continue until May 2013.

Last Thursday’s open house addressed the concerns of business owners who will be affected by the construction. Although the project’s goal is to improve current road conditions, the overall mood of business owners who will have to weather the yearlong operation was anything but optimistic.

“Just give me a chair and a rope,” said John Sutch, owner of Pro Art Source on Point Fosdick Drive NW.

Although the comment was delivered tongue-in-cheek, Sutch expressed serious concerns over whether small businesses would survive traffic disruptions caused by the construction.

“Americans travel in a straight line,” he said. “They take the shortest distance, and you put anything in their way, and they’ll go around it. They’re putting up an obstacle in a downed economy. If you have a mess out there, they’ll go some other place.”

Sutch said he’s been in business for 28 years in Gig Harbor and has loyal customers he hopes will continue to come in.

“I may be able to survive on that alone,” he said. “But they have to start a project when businesses are struggling to stay alive. They’ll be faced with access problems along with the competition. People will go elsewhere if it’s too hard to get in there — if it’s too much of a hassle.”

Sutch is worried about neighboring businesses that are service-related, like Walt’s Auto Care Center and Paws & Kisses pet salon.

“These are services you can’t get online,” he said. “You’re dealing with small businesses that have been here for a long time, but they’re sitting back off the road and they’re probably going to go under. People will be laid off, and landlords will have empty spaces. They’re probably going to be looking at empty buildings.”

Sutch suggested that road crews could minimize customer disruption by conducting a majority of their work at night.

Marcos McGraw, the city’s project engineer, said that possibility had been brought up in discussions with the city administrator and the city engineer. The consensus was that night work would be damaging to a couple of businesses, particularly the Inn at Gig Harbor, whose guests would be disturbed by the noise.

“We did discuss night work with several business owners,” McGraw said. “The current direction the city is taking is that it will be daytime work. There are some major portions of the work that we are considering doing at nighttime, but right now, the majority will be day work.”

Denny Driscoll, co-owner of the Tanglewood Grill on 56th Street NW, said if the work was done at night, it would be worse, since most of the business at the restaurant is done after 4 p.m.

Nonetheless, Driscoll agrees with Sutch’s view.

“I think it’s going to be devastating,” he said. “It will make it much more difficult to get to the restaurant. The common concern is the ease of our guests in getting to the restaurant.”

Gordon E. Nelson, a civil engineer with David Evans and Associates, the city’s engineering consultant, said the city would be working on minimizing the impact to commerce.

“There will be signage put up on the roadways adjacent to the project that will let the public know that businesses are open during construction,” he said. “The city will require the contractor to provide access to businesses. There will be lots of eyes on the project to make sure customers have full access to businesses during working hours with as little disruption as possible.”

That idea was little consolation to people like Sutch who believe problems were created long ago when a freeway exit from state Route 16 to 56th Street was closed and traffic redirected onto the Olympic Drive overpass.

Sutch said that plan led to traffic backups on Olympic Drive that worsened over time.

“I asked about opening the old exit,” he said. “If you’re going to tear this all up, at least make an improvement and open up the old exit directly onto 56th. People would have a straight shot with one light to get to Point Fosdick. Those short queues (on Olympic) are killers.”

Sutch said while projecting which businesses will go under while the city expands large shopping centers, they should weigh the gains versus the losses.

“You can call it progress, but you lose your quaintness,” he said. “Unless they want Gig Harbor to be the next Bellevue-Kirkland.”