The Philadelphia Water Department said that work is finished and the streets will reopen Thursday.
Aris Katourtsidis, who owns Old City Pizza right at this intersection, is happy to hear this.
“Definitely going to help us because cars are going to be moving,” he said, “so this way if somebody wants to stop in and get a slice real fast they can jump out of their car, whereas before, they didn’t want to walk two blocks to get a slice.”
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But he wasn’t completely jumping for joy as he spoke to KYW Newsradio. After all, there’s still the pandemic to worry about.
“This is like World War III,” Katourtsidis said when asked about dealing with these closures, plus coronavirus restrictions for the last month or so. “It’s definitely a double whammy. The first one is about over, but the second one is scarier because there’s no date that everything is going to be normal again.”
Workers at Mulberry Market nearby said the same thing — they’re happy to get some of their customers back with the streets reopening, but coronavirus will still keep many of them away.
Katourtsidis said he lost over 50% of his business just from the repair work.
“We were planning to throw a party once it’s complete, but coronavirus ruined that,” he added.
The Water Department sent a letter out to businesses letting them know the closures are over.
“Each step along the way, we found some complications or delays,” explained PWD spokesman John DiGiulio, who described this project as an “all-hands-on-deck” partnership with other utility companies. “We did work as quickly as we could through all that to get the intersection back open as quickly as we could.”