Up to five days of closure of the eastbound Interstate 70 on-ramp at Rifle will only add to Liz Stinson’s woes.

The Rifle Liquor store owner has closely watched the City of Rifle’s roundabout project outside her front door at 704 Taughenbaugh Blvd. since it began in June.
“It’s completely affected my business,” Stinson said. “It’s crazy. They might as well put signs out on the interstate that say ‘shop in Parachute or Silt, because you can’t get into Rifle’.”

The ramp closure will begin Saturday, July 26 and could last until Tuesday, July 30, Project Engineer Nick Senn with Schmueser Gordon Meyer told Rifle City Council at its July 16 meeting, where the council reluctantly approved the closure plan.
That closure will be followed by a similar closure of eastbound traffic from South 7th Street, west of Airport Road and the roundabout construction, that could last from Aug. 9-13.

The closures are needed to allow workers to pour concrete for new ramps and intersections, rather than switch traffic several times from the east and west lanes over the next few months, and help ensure safer working conditions, said Tim Laudick, project manager with Martinez Western Constructors, the contractors on the project.

“Closing the on-ramp for four or five days allows us to complete one full side of that roundabout, with all the traffic staying on the other side,” he said. “We think it could save us six to eight days on the overall project.”

When the on-ramp is closed, Stinson said traffic congestion will only get worse.
“You’re going to have all those beer delivery trucks, all those other delivery trucks, going on (U.S. Highway 6 to Silt and then back to exit 94 at the Garfield County Airport to reach customers such as Wal-Mart and other stores on Airport Road.) I don’t think the highway will handle all that traffic,” she said.

Roundabout work is part of the reason the Tasty Tomato restaurant, 100 E. 3rd St., closed it’s doors on Tuesday, July 22.
“It didn’t help, but neither did the (new concrete sidewalk ramps, built by city crews this month),” owner and Manager Tamra Stroud said. “I think it was more the economy. Families have to choose whether to put gas in the gas tank at $5 a gallon or eat out. I understand.”

Still, Stroud said the restaurant’s business dropped by 50 percent when the roundabout project started.

“People that work over on that side of the river didn’t want to drive through the construction to get here,” Stroud said.
Stroud said she doesn’t think city officials considered how much business north of the river would be affected by the roundabout project.

The Tasty Tomato opened July 19, 2007 and closed just days after their one-year anniversary.

“I can in all honesty say the community did support us,” Stroud said. “It was just the timing with the economy sucked.”

Rifle Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Annick Pruett said “given the choices, (closing the on-ramp) was the lesser of two evils.”

“They would be absolutely crazy to change the lanes back and forth three times,” she said of the other option. “And the safety of the workers out there is very important, too.”

Pruett said she’s probably like most area residents - just do what needs to be done to get it done.

The chamber’s visitors center just north of I-70 has had a 50 percent drop in visitors since the project started, she said.

“I have volunteers ask if they can go home because there’s no one here,” Pruett said. “I tell them they might as well.”

Stinson also wonders if Martinez Western has enough workers to finish the job in a timely fashion, since the company is also building a roundabout in Silt and pouring concrete for Rifle’s new wastewater treatment plant.

Laudick said the company is stretched thin, but that isn’t why the ramp needs to be closed.

“We had a 10 working day delay on Airport Road because some utilities had to be moved,” he said. “There’s been no concrete poured in Silt yet, only pipeline work.”
Laudick said crews this week had to tear up three sections of recently poured concrete when it cracked in the wrong place.

“Concrete always cracks and you control it with saw cuts,” he said. “This section cracked in the wrong place, so it wasn’t reinforced and we had to replace it.”
Laudick said electronic variable message signs have been set up at the stoplight on Highways 13 and 6&24, eastbound on I-70 and newspaper and radio ads are running to inform the public of the upcoming closures.