East Austin business owner impacted by construction

AUSTIN, Texas - One East Austin business owner says construction near her restaurant is making it harder for customers to get to her business and its hurting sales.

The business owner says while the closure has only been two weeks, it's already had a huge impact financially on her business.

The backstory:

For more than a decade, Mary Jenkins has built her business around serving the East Austin community. But now she says just getting into her restaurant, Cenote, has proven to be a challenge.

"It's been devastatingly slow these past two weeks for us. I mean it's. It's painful," said Mary Jenkins, owner of Cenote.

The restaurant and bar has been in business since 2012 and has called East 7th Street home for the last year. Jenkins says summer construction began in the lot behind her business. She learned it would become a charging station for Robo Taxis.

But two weeks ago, the alley her customers used to access her parking lot and business became blocked off. And the timing couldn’t be worse.

"It's closed weekdays until about 3 or 4 p.m. and then they reopen it. That's our busiest time of day. It's really important for people to be able to just drop in and grab a to-go order or coffee on their way to work or on their lunch break and not having that access really hurts," said Jenkins.

The parking lot that gets blocked off is part of her rent payment.

"Our rent is really high and part of that is because it comes with parking," said Jenkins.

She says customers can still find other parking nearby, but it's paid or hard to find, and she worries that extra inconvenience could keep customers away.

"Feel like it's almost as if we're, we're not even open for business because our customers can't get to us and park, you know, close to us," said Jenkins.

Jenkins says this is already a slow time of year for the service industry, but says the alley being closed off only adds fuel to the fire. 

Recently, she posted about the situation online asking for help from the community. She also emailed her city council member looking for answers, but she says the financial hit has already begun.

"We could have closed down for a week and given everybody a paid vacation, and it probably would have been less expensive than staying open and being slow. So, it just feels like something went wrong somewhere," said Jenkins.

Jenkins says she also filed a report with 311.

We reached out to Austin Transportation and Public works to learn more. They say they are working on our request.