Nearly three months into construction on the Harris Overpass some West O businesses are showing signs of struggle, including one that has closed its doors for good.

Tobacco Hut, 1700 West O St., Suite 4, closed Thursday after eight years in business, owner Steven Etzold said.

The economy probably didn’t help matters, but the construction and disruption to traffic through the West O corridor is what hurt most, he said.

“The bridge pretty much took most of it,” he said.

The bridge that connects downtown with west Lincoln, carrying 26,000 vehicles a day over the rail yards, has been closed since Nov. 12.

Construction is on schedule, despite losing a day or two when temperatures turned extreme in recent weeks, said Larry Duensing, construction project manager. The project is due for completion late this fall.

But Etzold said he believed he couldn’t have held on that long, particularly after business dropped 50 percent in the last six weeks. The decision to close was literally made overnight, he said.

He’s heard rumblings of troubles from other businesses too.

Randy Haas, head of the West O Business Association, said the impact has been mixed.

Location and type of business are really the big factors separating the businesses that are getting by from those seeing harder times, he said. Businesses west of Sun Valley Boulevard haven’t seen as sharp a cut to the traffic flow than those businesses on the east side, for example, he said.

Haas said he had not heard about any business having to close. He was unaware of Tobacco Hut’s decision, he said.

Haas, who owns T.O. Haas Tire, said his business has actually been up a bit. He can only guess he’s captured more business from residents in the area who are now inconvenienced to head east, he said.

A Web site the association designed to drum up business, www.westocoupons.com, also has brought some customers through the door, he said.

The association also has $10,000 it plans to put toward advertising efforts this spring and plans to begin discussion this week about how to do that.

For some businesses, the lunch hour has proven the hardest hit.

That’s the case at Popeyes, where business has dropped about 30 percent or 40 percent, manager Matt Teppan said. It’s forced employees to cut back on the hours they work in a week, though hasn’t meant any layoffs, he said.

The Red Fox Steakhouse also has seen its lunch crowd shrink which brought on the need to layoff two employees, owner Don Arena said. He estimated his mid-day business — what he said he built his business on — has dropped about 20 percent, despite pumping about $5,000 into advertising, pushing specials and dropping prices.

“It’s just a tough go,” he said.

Business traditionally slows around this time of year, but never this severely, he said. What he can’t differentiate is how much of it is caused by the bridge work and how much blame goes to the economy.

But Arena has one more plan in the works: He plans to open a second location near Pine Lake Road and South 14th Street in a site occupied until recently by Slapshotz Bar & Grill.

He tentatively plans to call it The F.O.X. Restaurant Neighborhood Bar & Grill. It likely will feature a similar menu. He still has some remodeling to handle and to get it properly licensed, but it could be open by May 1, he said.

He hopes in the long run, the two locations will serve him well.

“It may be a bad time to be expanding with the economy, but I guess I still have to be aggressive,” he said.

Reach Jean Ortiz at 473-7107 or jortiz@journalstar.com.