Parking on Main Street is prohibited to make room for redirected traffic, after another road was shut down because of a collapsing building.
Now, local business owners said they’re losing money. The owner of South Fork News Convenience Store said she’s lost about $100-200 a day since parking was banned on Friday.
Andy Poborski owns PA Liquidators. He said he knows town officials are working to fix the problem, but he hopes it doesn’t take much longer.
“The normal residents that normally park out here, are parking on them side streets. So they’re eating up them spots as well. So, you know, right now, for someone to come to my business, I don’t know where they’d really park. I really don’t,” said Poborski.
Lake Street is blocked off between Maple and Church Streets because a blighted building damaged by a fire seven years ago started to collapse.
Peggy Glacken is a borough council member and owns Crute’s Barber Shop on Main Street.
She said the borough put in a bid to buy the condemned building from its current owner on March 24th, but they’re optimistic they can knock it down sooner because it’s a public safety hazard.
“We all have to work together. It’s a problem for our whole town, but we do have to work together on it and everybody has to be understanding of one of the other and do what we can do to help each other out,” Glacken said. “We have to ask our customers and people that come into town to be understanding and just kind of go with the flow a little bit until things are resolved.”
South Fork Borough council members plan to hold a public meeting with the solicitor on Monday, March 6th at 5:30 p.m. at 507 Maple Street, to talk about the town’s options.
Council members are hoping to come up with a solution to tear down the building as soon as possible.