Early each morning employees of SD Deacon General Contractors and their subcontractors descend upon the Admiral Safeway construction site in West Seattle to build a 60,000-plus square foot grocery store, 78-apartment complex and 7,000 square feet of additional retail space with an estimated completion date of August, 2011.

Many construction worker vehicles end up taking valued spots in front of Admiral retail stores such as Alki Bike and Board, owned and operated by Stu Hennessey, at 2606 California Ave s.w.

“What’s really important is people know that we are here and open for business,” Hennessey, who watches prime parking real estate snatched up for the day long before potential customers arrive each day, said.

“We have 30 to 50 (construction) employees coming in each day to work on the site and they pretty much pick whatever parking was available without any room left for a lot of the customer parking, so that makes a difference (in business volume),” he said.

Sara Corn, real estate manager for Safeway, said, “It’s just a tight site and the store is taking up so much space. I know they (SD Deacon) leased out as many spaces as were available in that Bartell’s parking lot (on 42nd Ave s.w.) but at this point right now a lot of the subs are on site and so there is just no parking.”

“This happens often with projects in the city,” she continued, “they try to find the closest public parking lot but in West Seattle there are not really near Admiral except for the one they are leasing …”

For Hennessey, who has endured the realities of large construction projects and their side-effects before, it is a matter of endurance.

“The thing that’s going to be very hard to deal with is how long now it’s going to go before we see any improvements,” he said. “We don’t see any changes for the next six months.”

Hennessey has seen a distinct drop in walk-in business since the construction began six months ago, including the all-important holiday season in retail.

“We have a bit of a challenge to get through,” he said, “but it’s not just that (parking), it’s the economics of people having (less) money to spend in general so there is kind of a perfect storm going on, but that doesn’t mean we’re not open for business and we are servicing people …growth just isn’t going to happen and we are in a little bit of decline.”

“You know we can ride out some of this for a time but since this is essentially going to be almost a year of disruptions since they started … that’s a long time to ride out anything in retail.”

“The good thing is we have some really super loyal customers who are going to come to us regardless of what the roadblocks might be, so they are going to get in here,” Hennessey said. “And that’s just from years of doing business; they are just that kind of people.”

In addition to the loss of parking there have been other side effects, Hennessey said.

“Our building tends to shake and rumble most of the open hours, we’ve had electricity shut off so we’ve had phone service disruption and we had one time where they actually turned our power off so we had to go home.”

Although Hennessey finds himself in the heart of that perfect storm today, he sees brighter skies ahead.

“I’m hoping to see that when it is a completed project with 78 new (apartment) units going in … with that we would pick up more customers in our local base,” he said.

The 7000 square feet of retail space going in on California Ave will also bring more variety to the Admiral retail district and Hennessey hopes that will bring more shoppers to the area.

For now, Alki Bike and Board and next door’s Bird on a Wire Espresso are creating incentive for retail customers to shop the Admiral Junction. Hennessey said they are offering discounts to customers who show a receipt from spending money at other businesses in the area, such as the Admiral Theater. Alki is offering ten percent off bike parts (not bikes themselves), for example.

At the end of the day, Hennessey is confident in his ability to survive – a belief informed by many years of experience in retail and a greater trend for transportation in Seattle.

“Using a car is not all that easy to do, it’s time consuming if you are willing to sit and listen to your radio or talk on the phone and not really go anywhere – it’s kind of wasted time from some peoples’ perspective. They get on their bikes and they get downtown faster than the people in their cars … and a lot of people are looking at the gas prices right now so that’s something we have to look forward to, people making the change. We expect to see a lot more people taking to the bike this year.”

To read the latest developments on the Admiral Safeway project, please check out the Herald story, Admiral Safeway projected for August completion in West Seattle.