As State Road 37 project nears restart at 141st Street, some Fishers shops hang by thread

The daily grind for drivers and businesses around State Road 37 and 141st Street in Fishers will persist for a while, but the end is now, at least and at last, within sight.

After a 16-month closure of 141st Street to cross traffic at State Road 37, construction is scheduled to begin on a roundabout at the intersection that will eventually open the road again.

But it won’t be completed any time soon. The project is expected to start in late summer at the earliest and won't be finished until the end of 2025, keeping the crossover shuttered until then.

Fishers signed a $37.6 million contract with Gradex Inc., of Indianapolis, to build the expressway-style roundabout, the final interchange to be built in a larger State Road 37 project begun six years ago. Construction could begin in May.

The city delayed construction of the interchange in June 2022, because all the bids it received from contractors exceeded its budget. Officials decided to wait until economic conditions improved and it could get a better price.

More: Kroger grocery store, nearly 100 new homes proposed for 146th Street in Noblesville

In the meantime, Fishers closed 141st Street across State Road 37 in January 2023, so traffic could flow on State Road 37 without stopping between 116th Street and 146th Street. The “right in, right out,” alignment means drivers have to go to 146th or 136th Street to cross State Road 37.

The closing has hurt sales at some businesses and simply caused aggravation at others.

At Just Vapor, located in a strip mall near State Road 37, owner Jason Odle said sales are down 40% to 50%.

“People don’t have the ability to get to the shop easily,” he said. “Even customers right on the other side of 37 say it’s a pain to drive an extra five minutes to get over here and then five minutes to get back over. People heading home from Indianapolis at the end of the day say it’s too much of a hassle to go by and double back and then get on again.”

Odle’s shop has been at the spot for 10 years, and survived the COVID pandemic and government regulation of vaping. But he said enduring the construction has been the toughest challenge and required constant outreach to customers on social media.

“When you shut down traffic for more than a year and do no work whatsoever, that’s tough,” said Odle.

He said he is glad construction will finally begin but, unfortunately, that will only increase congestion and make customers even less likely to come into the area in the immediate future. He said he would be laying off two employees soon.

“We are now at the tipping point,” Odle said.

Odle said he was irked that the other intersections along State Road 37, where large car dealerships and a Walmart are located, were finished promptly but 141st Street, with a string of mom-and-pop businesses, had to wait.

“They left us to flail and die,” he said. “Maybe that’s what they wanted.”

The general manager of Omega Autosports on Trade Center Dr. said sales have not suffered because so much business is now done online but running business-related errands is more time-consuming.

“We often have to get auto parts from a store right across 37 but now it takes an extra 20 minutes,” said Michael Galford. “The same goes for the car wash where we take our cars when they get dusty sitting around.”

“That means you're going to have an employee gone for longer periods of time,” he said.

Galford said he appreciates that the city is going to reopen 141st for the long term. When IndyStar contacted him last year he predicted that the temporary closure was just a prelude to a long-range strategy to keep it “right-in, right out” permanently.

“I guess I was wrong,” he said.

Filberto Jaurez, owner of Best Bet Breakfast & Lunch on the east side of State Road 37, said sales have held steady but he has had a drop in certain customers.

“There are some people who used to come in every morning but now it's just it’s just two or three days a week,” he said. ”For the most part, though, when people are hungry they find a way to get here."

The business owners worried that the State Road 37 intersection construction would worsen traffic jams already caused by the ongoing construction on the roundabout at Allisonville Road and 146th Street, just 1.5 miles northwest of them.

Construction of the split-level roundabout and overpass on Allisonville is scheduled to last until the summer or fall of 2025 and Allisonville Road traffic across 146th Street is currently closed until the end of May. The roundabout is part of a $44 million project that will include the widening of the bridge over the White River west of the intersection.

The State Road 37 project is a $160 million rebuilding of the road into an expressway-style thoroughfare with roundabout interchanges that started in 2018. Fishers, Noblesville, Hamilton County and the Indiana Department of Transportation are sharing the cost, with Fishers as the project lead.

The project will be completed two years later than originally projected and $40 million more expensive.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at 317-444-6418. Email at john.tuohy@indystar.com and follow on X/Twitter and Facebook.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: State Road 37 project to restart at 141st Street as Fishers shops cope