Businesses Rejoice at End of Streetscape Project

Now that the months of road construction in downtown Houghton are finally over with, businesses are breathing a sigh of relief.

MDOT took away the last of the road barriers from Shelden Avenue and Montezuma Avenue earlier today.

That means anyone heading downtown doesn’t have to take a detour anymore to get to the stores.

And that means more foot traffic at shops like Surplus Outlet.

Clerk Connie Gaff says as people are starting to walk through the downtown area again out of curiosity about how it looks, the store is beginning to see the return of walk-in customers.

They’d largely been missing for the last 6 months.

She says the situation for them hasn’t been as bad as it could have.

They have plenty of customers who worked their way around and through the Streetscape construction to shop there anyway.

She hopes a lot of people come out tomorrow night for a downtown reopening of sorts from 5 to 7.

The goal of Treat Street is to show how much better-looking Houghton’s commercial strip is now that the work is over with.