Victoria Brown was thrilled to look out the windows of her Pacific Avenue gallery Monday and see freshly painted white and yellow lines on new asphalt.

“Hooray! It’s done,” she said. “They painted the lines.”

Brown, the co-owner of a wearable arts and contemporary crafts gallery called BKB & Company, is one of several dozen battle-hardened veterans of construction along Pacific Avenue through Tacoma’s Museum District, a stretch of pavement that’s been a work in progress for nearly a decade.

Construction crews finished paving Phase One of the $2.7 million Pacific Avenue project last week, and business owners are relieved to have yet another disruption over.

Compared to previous projects, several said, this one was not all that bad.

“Things definitely were slower, but we weren’t completely dead,” said Emily Atkinson, a sales associate at South Sound Running, which specializes in running shoes and apparel. “They did everything at night, and that helped a lot.”

Phase One of the project, which began Aug.17, included excavating and repaving a failing section along the west side of Pacific between South 17th and 21st streets.

Next, according to Tacoma Public Works engineer Raymond Van Der Roest, comes the east side of Pacific along the same stretch. Then crews will move on to repave Pacific from 21st to 25th and up 25th to C Street.

Each of the next three phases is expected to take about 20 days to complete, with total project completion by the end of November.

The city took pains to minimize disruption to businesses, Van Der Roest said, confining work to nighttime hours, keeping sidewalks open and maintaining daytime angled parking and bus service as usual.

The project also was timed to avoid heavy retail sales events, said city spokeswoman Karrie Spitzer. Work originally was slated to begin in early summer, she said, but businesses – hit hard in the past several years by the construction of Tacoma Link light rail and other projects – said they didn’t want to risk losing Tall Ships business in July or the annual holiday shopping surge in December.

“We wanted it done in plenty of time for the holiday season,” Brown said. “If they stay on schedule, I think things will be OK.”

The biggest problem during construction was dust, said Reina Beach, co-owner of the specialty bakery Hello, Cupcake. “It was very dusty, but even that wasn’t that much of an issue for us,” she said. “They were very efficient, as far as I can tell.”

Brown said she had to put strips of cardboard between her double shop doors to keep dust from drifting into the gallery.

About $2.26 million of the $2.7 million project is coming from federal funds, Spitzer said. The city is paying $225,700, she said, while Sound Transit and Pierce Transit are picking up another $127,000.

Pacific Avenue businesses are not quite in the clear yet.

After the repaving is finished, construction of a Sounder commuter rail crossing of Pacific Avenue will begin.

That project is scheduled to start in 2009 and finish in 2011 or 2012, according to Sound Transit.

“It’s not ever going to be over,” Brown said. “It’s always something different.”

Even so, Brown said, she considers the Museum District excellent for sales.

“We’ve got tons of action going on down here,” she said.

Rob Carson: 253-597-8693

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