At restaurants and bars near I-95 collapse, traffic is flowing and customers are returning again

Two weeks ago, Brooke Higgins was bracing for weeks, if not months, of the worst.

After the I-95 collapse, the southbound detour and subsequent road closures snarled traffic around her Northeast Philadelphia BBQ restaurant, Sweet Lucy’s Smokehouse. The dining room was nearly empty, as employees behind the counter kept busy filling catering orders.

This weekend, however, the scenes were vastly different.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro came in for lunch Friday after officially reopening I-95. By the evening, traffic was flowing normally again out front of her State Road spot. And on Sunday, Sweet Lucy’s was one of the businesses that catered the Xfinity Live! appreciation party for the construction crews who had repaired the highway so quickly.

» READ MORE: I-95 reopens to traffic in Northeast Philly, 12 days after a deadly fire caused a bridge collapse

“We had a pretty busy weekend,” said Higgins, a co-owner of Sweet Lucy’s. “I was just amazed. I just couldn’t believe they got that done so fast.”

The lightning-fast reopening of I-95 has meant relief for Northeast Philadelphia business owners like Higgins. Two weeks ago, several owners and managers in the area told The Inquirer they were deciding whether to cut back hours or change staffing. They worried, too, about how a potential long-term closure would impact business, especially as they continued to recover from the pandemic. Some experts had predicted a fix would take months.

“We were going to close, to be honest, it was that bad,” said Michael Ditro, manager of Curran’s Irish Inn, a State Road pub that lost much of its parking and saw business plummet 95% in the first days after the road collapse.

Now, “it’s all pretty back to normal,” he said. “Everything is open.”

Among the businesses most affected were Curran’s and a few other restaurants on State Road. Southbound travelers were detoured off I-95 at Bleigh Avenue then directed onto State Road for less than a mile. In the early days, officials closed many of the area’s east-west roads, essentially cutting off local access to some businesses.

“Everyone is just tired of sitting on 95 and wants to get home,” Chris Wilson, a founding partner of Sharkey’s Grill & Ale House, said at the time, as he watched a stream of cars inching off the highway onto Bleigh Avenue.

This week, his attitude was more optimistic.

“We’re lucky, and happy that it didn’t take as long as first projected,” he said. “Our numbers were still a little off for the weekend, but we’re hoping we’ll recover.”

Given that the roads just opened, Wilson predicted it’d take about a week to truly gauge the impact, particularly given that Sharkey’s typically draws crowds for weekday events like Quizzo.

Farther from the collapse, near Frankford and Cottman Avenues, business and day-to-day operations seemed back to normal at Stein Your Florist Co., said longtime employee Dana Condron.

During those two weeks, customers and employees coped. Patrons were understanding, Condron said. No one complained about delivery times. Delivery drivers arrived earlier, she said, and found alternate routes. After all, she said, you don’t want to “get jammed up on 95 if you have a funeral in South Philly.”

And the flower shop got creative in an attempt to ease drivers’ frustrations. They started selling detour bouquets, which came in vases sized to fit a car’s cup holder.

Some sold, Condron said, and they are still available for purchase in the store.

“I think people thought they were amusing,” she said. “People got a laugh out of it and it put a smile on their face.”

Down the street, clothing store Art History 101 has done well in the wake of the collapse. In fact, partner Eric Bamberger said business has been up over the past two weeks, fueled in part by the popularity of CEO Jay Pross’ limited-edition T-shirt etched with the words “Avoid Northeast Philly.”

The store has sold 450 of the 500 shirts it created, he said, and Father’s Day business was better than it was last year.

That was also the case at Sweet Lucy’s, which hosted 300 reservations for Father’s Day brunch despite the traffic issues.

“The unknown is always scarier than the known,” Higgins said. “We’re used to dealing with adversity in the restaurant business. If it was going to be months, we would have figured out something else for sure.”

But she’s grateful, she said, that she didn’t have to.