AURORA — Herbert Hubert says the Regional Transportation District’s new light-rail line through the city likely will be a great boost to the local economy when it opens at the end of next year. He just isn’t sure if Helga’s German Restaurant and Deli will be around to enjoy the success.

“Helga and I really support development and improvement in the city, and we look forward to having the light-rail here,” said Hubert, co-owner of the restaurant. “The question is: Will we survive the construction?”

Construction activity around the light-rail line in the center of the city has been ongoing for about a year a half, and small businesses in the area have felt the backlash of decreased customer traffic and consistently falling revenue.

“In August, we got our numbers back, and we’re down $16,000 and 14 percent gross sales for that month,” Hubert said. “It seems like June, July and August have been the worst, because they’ve had Sable closed for the last eight weeks, and Exposition has been partially closed for that last six to eight weeks.”

The bulk of road closures during construction began at the end of last year as the Kiewit Corporation, the construction team working to build the 10.5-mile light-rail from Nine Mile Station to Peoria Street, began extensive utility relocation and roadwork in the area.

The closures of Sable Boulevard and Exposition Avenue all summer have been particularly rough for small businesses that typically use those streets as entry points to their store fronts. At Helga’s, the closing and then near daily rerouting of detours of East Exposition Avenue has hurt.

“People can’t find a way in here, and then they have a negative attitude about coming here,” Hubert said. “Between June and July and the first two weeks of August, I can tell you that we’re down about $22,000 versus the same time period last year. We’ve closed the restaurant on Mondays now, too. We honestly don’t know if we’ll even be around when this is done.”

A partial lane re-opening of Sable and Exposition occurred last weekend,but Kiewit is getting ready for a full closure of Alameda Avenue around the beginning of October that will prolong the traffic ensnarement that’s kept consumers far away fromthe area around Aurora Town Center.

“There’s a lot of work to happen in this area to make it so that the train can come though, so we are going to close this intersection at the beginning of October, but it will be reopened before Thanksgiving,” said Hunter Sydnor, spokeswoman for the Kiewit Corporation. “We’re trying to get as much utilities moved before this big closure as possible. We will pretty much be working day and night here. We’ll hopefully be done with Exposition before the end of the year.”

But frustrations over the prolonged timeframe are mounting for businesses along the construction corridor.

“I feel cheated,” said Mike Lee, owner of E Mart located along Sable Boulevard. “They told us this would take six months, and now it’s going to be two years. I didn’t sign up for that.”

He said, “I applied for another line of credit to try and manage my losses, but our revenue has dropped 40 percent, and no one will lend me the money. The bank told me to go to the city, or to RTD, but none of them have any funds to help us.”

There are no city loan programs in place to offset the loss of revenue due to light-rail construction. Aurora designed a business “tool box” brochure that gives suggestions for overcoming the challenges that businesses face with interruptions to traffic flow, and RTD has placed “open access” and “all businesses open” signs throughout the area.

“We want to help however we can,” said Lisa Trujillo, spokeswoman for the I-225 light-rail line, called the R-Line. “We thank (business owners) for their patience, and we’re sorry. But it’s short-term pain for long-term gain.”

But that doesn’t do anything to bring in customers now.

“My traffic is down 600 workouts a month,” said Tracy Boone, who has owned of Better Bodies Fitness on East Exposition Avenue for 23 years. “I mean, I’ve lost members that I’ve had for 20 years because of this. It’s overwhelming and disheartening. I’ve never experienced anything like this.”

Nor has Hubert.

“There’s nothing out there,” he said. “I’ve reached out to the city, to everyone. I’m not looking for a handout, just a little help and confidence through this. There’s nothing. It either wasn’t considered, or it was just ignored that the businesses won’t survive it.”

Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Mmitchelldp