The Taipei City Government is trying to organize shop owners and landlords on the block where my first restaurant is located to replace the sidewalk of the inside walkway so that the entire block has the same level and style of sidewalk. There will be no cost to any of us to do so and they promise to minimize the impact of the construction to customers. However, I am still worried about how much impact there will be on business during the construction. Have any of you had this happen in front of your business, and if so what was the impact on sales levels during and after the construction? There is a meeting to discuss this scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.
It was done here in the Nanyang Street area (near the Taipei train station) a few months ago with minimal apparent impact to business. The results are a much more pleasant walking surface.
I’ve seen them already do it around where I live, near Taipei main station mitsukoshi area. Its quite an improvement, although the footpaths aren’t really the same level, what they do is put a filler between the levels to create a slope rather than a trip hazard.
They revamped the storefront walkway along Heping E. Rd. near Guting MRT several months ago. What they did was put a wooden plank leading up to each shop entrance over the walkway as the tiles were being set in place and the cement was still wet, so customers could “walk the plank” and still enter the shops. It was done rather rapidly (2 days?), and now it’s a lot more pleasant to walk on.
The way they explained it for our block is that they’d rip out all the inner walkways (under the building part) and then put in cement and tile along the whole block even with the level of the outer walkways. I agree that this would be a great improvement. For those who’ve been to my Subway Xingtian Temple restaurant you’ve probably noticed that pretty much every shop has a different level of inner walkway. On the other hand, a long period of construction can really put a dent in business. It is nice to hear that they were able to do this elsewhere with minimal impact to the businesses.
you’ll have to step in quickly and ask the council navvies to insert these ‘moulds’ into the cement at strategic places to allow karl, who we all know is really sandman in hiding, to continue to enjoy his hard fetish.
“nice moulds you have there, mate. i think i’ve seen one before, in my girlfriends bedside drawer. hers had batteries, though…”
They have recently revamped the original sidewalks near my home in Chungho. They replaced the old cement surface with new tiles and it looked really nice, then they painted parking spaces on them for thousands of scooters, so now more pedestrians can’t use them.
Nanjing East Road just east of Xinsheng N Rd also had its sidewalks flattened.
Business wise, I think it might put a dent in your number of casual walk-in customers, but since this kind of work goes much faster here than what I’ve seen in Europe, it shouldn’t harm you more than a couple of days.
Or you could put on a low-cut peasant dress, whip up some whisbi dressing, and offer sarnies to the workmen. Make hay while the sun shines and all that.
Just got back from the meeting. I was under the impression that the meeting would be just for our block, but it had people from all over Zhongshan district there. If they get everyone in an area to agree then they will do it in sections of around 100 meters at a time. Total construction time for each section will be 7-12 days, however only 3 days of having to ‘walk the plank’. For this group they plan to start in June.
The only bad thing is that they give each shop the option of whether to take a totally flat walkway or whether they ramp up and down between each shop at the existing levels. That’s somewhat of an improvement but still kind of defeats the purpose in my opinion.