Even among stores that front the impacted roads, much of the impact has been relatively minor, Knowles said. Among those he expected to be harder hit are restaurants, especially the ones on 400 West like Biaggi's and the Dodo.

"A couple of restaurants right there were reporting some declines, but given their location at kind of ground zero of situations going on last week, they were off 10 percent," he said. "That's not a good thing, but it's a lot less than I had expected to hear."

Knowles and Chad Saley, who oversees public involvement on the TRAX extension project, said there have been a number of outreach efforts to keep area businesses in the loop, to solicit advice and keep abreast of problems and to steer business to the area.

"It's going really pretty well," Saley said. "Obviously, with construction there are impacts. That's something we obviously can't avoid."

For businesses that have been most affected, it's not just a matter of losing business. Clough said light bulbs in some of his tanning beds have been broken, and he believes it is the result of the vibrations of heavy equipment operating outside his door.

Saley said Clough has filed a claim and it is pending. "If it truly was due to the construction, we will absolutely reimburse him and compensate him for anything that was damaged," Saley said.

He said he hopes Limelight and other struggling businesses will hang on through construction and continue to work with UTA and Knowles, because once the TRAX line is completed, it will help bring in customers.

Saley said UTA is in the process of trying to work out a way to provide non-Gateway businesses that are most hard-hit with Gateway parking validations so customers will have somewhere to park during the worst of the construction.

He expects the bulk of the destructive work — digging up roads to deal with utilities and infrastructure — to be finished in the next few weeks.

Crews will then start restoring the street, and by May or June, much of the road that's been torn up will be fixed. Work will then shift to the middle of the street as crews begin the work of laying track.

The extension is expected to be done in February or March 2008, with the line up and running in April 2008 to coincide with the opening of the FrontRunner commuter-rail line, which will also run to the intermodal hub.

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E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com