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Sewer project disrupts Woodruff Street businesses

A dump truck from a sewer project blocks the already limited access to Riverside Pet Supplies on Woodruff Street, Saranac Lake, on Tuesday. (Enterprise photo — Susan Moore)

SARANAC LAKE — In spite of the dump trucks, the excavator, the orange traffic barrels strung together with blaze-orange ribbons surrounding the construction site on Woodruff Street, Riverside Pet Supply is still open for business.

Store co-owner Don Schmidt came out into the rain to wave encouragement at a customer who hesitated before the gauntlet of heavy equipment in the parking lot.

“I’ve seen people pull up, stop at the other side, and then turn around and drive away,” said Schmidt. “We’ve lost a lot of business.”

Riverside Pet Supply has been in business for at least 30 years, spending its first 20 years in a location on Church Street. After that building burned to the ground, the business spent two years on Depot Street. It’s been at the Woodruff Street site for 12 years.

“This place has been good to us, until now,” he said with a chuckle.

Tracy Goetz and her father Don Schmidt co-own Riverside Pet Supplies on Woodruff Street, Saranac Lake, which remains open for business despite a village construction project blocking the road. (Enterprise photo — Glynis Hart)

Schmidt co-owns the business with his daughter Tracy Goetz. He lives in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and comes up in the summer so she can spend more time with her kids and get some vacation days.

“Put in a good word for MJ Construction,” Schmidt said of the firm the village hired for the job. “They’ve been very cooperative — if they see a customer is trying to get in, they’ll stop so they can get by.”

Customers can turn around behind the building if they need to, he added. There is no other approach to the business. “We’re surrounded by river,” he said.

The village department of public works is adding a second sewer lines under the Saranac River beside Woodruff Street, and while they’re digging, they’re also removing old oil tanks left underground where Riverside’s parking lot is now. The building used to be the site of an automotive business.

On the other side of the Woodruff Street bridge, which is now closed, crews have excavated a giant hole in the parking lot between the laundromat and the street. However, business owners said because the road’s not closed, construction hasn’t affected their business much.

Mike Kinville of Amusement & Vending said the only issue affecting him is that delivery trucks now have to go under the railroad bridge, which has 11 feet of clearance. Dump trucks trying to reach the construction site from the Bloomingdale Avenue side can’t do it, he said, which may affect the village’s work more than it will affect his.

Jim Minnie of Onsite Computer Services said an adjacent business had been affected by recent flooding, but the village project isn’t slowing down his customers. “If people need a computer fixed, they will find a way to get here,” he said.

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