The JD4.5 million Abdoun Circle Tunnel is the last in a series of projects to complete the 24.5km Inner Ring Road
AMMAN -- Business owners in Abdoun Circle stood around helpless this week as automated shovels tore into the heart of the area's usually bustling nightlife district to make way for the new Abdoun tunnel.
The JD4.5 million Abdoun Circle Tunnel is the last in a series of architectural projects to complete the 24.5km Inner Ring Road, designed to alleviate traffic congestion in the capital.
The Greater Amman Municipality (GAM) has said that work around the circle, which is the centre of the area's caf and restaurant culture, will continue for the next four months and the area will remain closed to vehicles.
But local businessmen have questioned the timing of the tunnel work, claiming that it coincides with their busiest period.
"Good-bye to summer," said Amer Rasas, who manages his brother's shawerma restaurant, referring to the loss of the circle's most lucrative season.
"The restaurant's revenue has already dropped by 50 per cent since they started digging," he said.
"The tunnel will pass by my coffee shop and they will dig down 10 metres, no one would think of coming here for a coffee with this hole next to him," said Ahmad Quttishat, concept manager of Future Hayat Company, which owns three restaurants and coffee shops in the circle.
Quttishat and other business owners and managers said GAM did not inform them about its plans in advance.
"We just knew about this from newspapers only a week ago," Quttishat said.
"No one from GAM is giving us the right answer when we ask when the work is going to end... some say in a month and others in three or four," he added.
According to a GAM official, interviewed by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, all components of the Inner Ring Road, including the Abdoun Circle will be ready by September this year.
A GAM official told The Jordan Times yesterday that businesses in the area had received notification about the work, but he could not verify whether they had received written notices.
"I talked to some business owners at the circle about this a few months ago. I understand that their businesses may be harmed but the project has to be completed. We need to connect Abdoun to south Amman," said Anwar Shunaq, the project manager for the suspension bridge connecting the Fourth Circle to Abdoun Circle.
"We can't postpone the work in Abdoun because we have signed an agreement with the contractor setting a deadline for completion of the project, he added.
The four-lane, 750-metre tunnel will start at the southern tip of the currently incomplete Abdoun Suspension Bridge and end at the Damascus Street-Prince Hashem Street intersection.
Work began around the circle on Friday with lighting being set up to work around-the-clock.
"I opened my business here in October, if GAM told me they were going to do this, I would have opened in another area," a disgruntled Quttishat told The Jordan Times.
Business owners say they sent a letter to both the prime minister and the Amman mayor on May 9 appealing for the municipality to postpone the construction work until the end of the busy summer season. So far they have received no reply.
"Abdoun Circle in summer is full of residents, people coming for a walk and cars, now even those who live here will not come," Quttishat said, lamenting the loss of the lucrative business season.
"We don't know how, as companies owners, we are going to handle this, I have 100 employees, I don't know how I am going to pay them," he added, noting that workers in some restaurants were worried about losing their jobs.
"My workers spent most of their time now just cleaning up the dust," he said.
Quttishat said he expects to lose up to JD350,000 in the next four months as a result of the timing of the construction work.
By Mahmoud Habboush
© Jordan Times 2006
