Brooks: Road construction is making it tough to get around. But small businesses need the extra effort.

Through the orange cones, through the construction dust, through the honking gridlock, Minneapolis businesses are open for business.

Massive road projects tied some of the city’s liveliest neighborhoods in knots this summer. Work crews moved in, ripped up, blocked off and rerouted great swaths of Uptown, Midtown, Dinkytown, Northeast Minneapolis and probably your neighborhood, too.

Lanes closed, roads closed, sidewalks closed. Neighborhood shops and restaurants opened anyway. Their customers needed them; they needed their customers.

It took Yana Pietras and Ian O’Neill more than a decade to build up their business. It took the Hennepin and First roadway improvement project six months to cut their sales in half.

To reach Moth Oddities — their wonderful, welcoming vintage shop, filled with handpicked finds the couple sourced across Italy and the U.S. — customers must first run the Northeast construction gantlet: orange cones, blocked lanes, rumbling construction equipment where parking spots used to be, barricaded sidewalks that force pedestrians to dart from one side of the street and back like a high-stakes game of Frogger. Keep going. Shops like these are worth it.

“It’s been disheartening and exhausting trying to do business amidst all the construction the last six months,” Pietras wrote to the Minnesota Star Tribune. She and O’Neill met at the University of Minnesota College of Design and bonded over a shared love of vintage in a world of fast fashion. Moth Oddities started in 2014 as an online shop and a single rack of clothes in their tiny studio apartment. In 2021, they opened their first storefront. Last year, they opened a studio space next door to their shop at 13 5th St. NE, hosting everything from workshops to classes to gallery shows.

And then came the first “Road Work Ahead” signs. Customers slipped away. Debts mounted. Neighborhood businesses hoped the city might treat the disruption like the disaster it felt like and step in with aid for struggling businesses.

“Shops like ours — and the neighboring locally owned restaurants, cafes, bars, boutiques, ice cream shops, artist studios, wellness studios, fitness clubs, salons, etc. — are what make the city of Minneapolis special. I wish the city could recognize this and provide better support during such disruptive times,” Pietras wrote.

“I am no expert but I can’t imagine the goal of this construction project is to have beautiful roads, new bike lanes, and green spaces connecting shuttered storefronts.”

This historic corner of Northeast, known as Old Town to some and “over by Surdyk’s” to everyone else, was a maze of one-way streets, odd angles and baffling intersections even before the road work.

But around every sharp corner is something wonderful. A vintage shop, a new restaurant. All the places that make a neighborhood worth visiting. If customers would just visit.

Earlier this month, the neighborhood’s vintage shops banded together and invited the community to brave the roadwork for a Vintage Block Party. More than 600 shoppers answered the call. Anyone who missed the party will get another shot during the monthlong Twin Cities Vintage Fall Crawl celebration in October.

“The vibes were great, the weather was beautiful, tons of smiles and positivity... it was palpable,” Pietras said. “We felt very supported that day, and from a business standpoint, we were able to recover some lost sales from earlier in the year and pay back some debts. But if the consistent day-to-day sales don’t return to normal soon it could mean closing up shop.”

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who lives in the neighborhood and has been facing the same construction dust, suggested that the best help the community could offer is doing what he and his family have been doing all summer — fight through the orange cones to shop, eat and drink at the businesses hit hardest by the construction.

“Construction projects can be an annoyance — for a small local business, far more than that,” he said. “At the same time, if we didn’t do this, people wouldn’t get water when they turn on the faucets.”

“This stuff is not optional,” he said of the citywide effort to replace its craggy roads and aging stormwater system.

If it feels like there’s a lot of road construction this season, that’s because there’s a lot of road construction this season.

Minneapolis Public Works maintains a citywide map of every public works project scheduled this year — a color-coded crazy quilt that traces road work, sewer replacements, bridge repairs, new bike lanes, intersection improvements, traffic calming and alley resurfacing across almost every neighborhood in the city. Click the map again for next year’s projects, and the year after that and the year after that.

Sections of Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue are getting their first serious road and sewer upgrades in 65 years. The improvements are needed and welcome, but Erik Hanson, director of city planning and economic development, estimates there are at least 240 businesses in the area caught in the middle of unwelcome dust, detours and hassle.

“You’re going through this disruption,” he said, but “on the other side, you’re going to have a brand-new street for the first time in almost 70 years.”

Until then, don’t be scared of the orange cones. Be scared of what could happen to your favorite shops and restaurants if you stay away.