Get the Facts: Business Impacts

Claim: Businesses are threatened, including a daycare center serving more than 80 families. The owner faces personal financial ruin.

The Town has already met with the owner of Bedford Children’s Center and currently attending families, and pledged to mitigate the impacts of this project including installing additional landscape screening, temporary sound barriers, and using additional dust control tactics. Police details will be on site at all times to direct traffic.

Many people will individually be affected by the construction phase; that is unavoidable with any construction project. However, no construction could ever move forward if disruption to daily life during the project was the standard for mitigation. Ultimately, the paved path will benefit many more people for years to come than it disrupts temporarily during the construction process.

Additional businesses quite likely will be helped by the increased interest in this trail. Since Lexington's stretch of the Minuteman Bikeway was completed, several businesses tailored to bikers, biking, and other wheeled sports have opened and thrived. Bedford has the same opportunity to support these kinds of businesses if we become more of a market for them.