Sansom businesses rejoice end of Law School construction

Some business owners on Sansom Street will heave a sigh of relief when the construction trucks drive away from Golkin Hall for the final time.

The Law School’s Golkin Hall — which opened Jan. 9 — will continue with minor construction until its official unveiling ceremony occurs in early April.

Looking back, this day has been a long-time coming for the local owners.

“The construction work was very loud … and very dusty,” said Deirdre MacDermott, business manager for the White Dog Cafe. “It was an inconvenience to our customers.”

Construction on Golkin Hall began in June 2010, according to Ed Datz, Penn’s executive director of Real Estate.

This initial construction had a major impact on White Dog’s business.

“In 2010, just looking at outdoor sales, we lost $65,000,” MacDermott said.

For Rebecca Wright, owner of Saturn Hair Club, one of the biggest problems was a lack of traffic.

Throughout the nearly two-year construction process, Sansom Street was partially blocked off for a majority of the time, Datz said.

Wright added that this led to a noticeable reduction in both pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

“The street was such a mess and sometimes completely closed off,” she said. “People just got out of the habit of walking up this block.”

Foot traffic is particularly important for restaurants, Wright said, which get a lot of their customers from casual passersby.

“No one wants to go out front. It’s an eyesore,” added John Fischer, the manager of Baby Blues BBQ. “The construction hurts your exposure. We’ve only been open for about a year and this hurt business.”

Datz explained that Penn was active in communicating with the business owners throughout the project, holding several meetings since June 2010 to provide status updates.

“With 95 percent of all the projects we do, we try to communicate early,” Datz said. “We met the businesses prior to the project’s start and we gave them the preliminary [timeline].”

While she appreciated the University’s outreach efforts, MacDermott acknowledged that “we didn’t feel that there was much concern for us … and that anybody was listening to us.”

Throughout the construction process, a lack of parking on Sansom Street also proved to be an issue.

A fair amount of Sansom’s visitors drive into the city from the suburbs, according to White Dog General Manager Paul Sabrese, and were forced to park a few blocks away from the street’s restaurants and shops due to the construction.

However the businesses found a loyal customer from one local patron: Penn Law itself.

“As a law school, we would try to frequent the businesses as often as we could,” Jo-Ann Verrier, Vice Dean of Administrative Services at Penn Law, said. “We did building update emails that went to the community and we did say to patronize our neighbors.”

Penn has also agreed to help the local businesses with advertising in the future.

Datz said the University plans to support the creation of something similar to Dining Days in University City or Restaurant Week in Center City on Sansom Street.

“We’ll do print ads, print media and a little bit of radio media,” Datz said. “ We’re currently setting up a meeting to pick a date for the event.”

Ultimately, despite the difficulties of the past year and a half, most of the business owners seem optimistic for the future.

“We’re excited. It looks better than ever because now we got all the wires underground,” Wright said, “We’re looking forward to the kind of things we can do to make the block fun again.”

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