Southern Ill. businesses feel relief as Rte. 3 opens

JONESBORO, Il. (KFVS) - Many businesses in the area feel relieved knowing that Route 3 is opening on Friday afternoon, July 26.

The assistant manager at Hebrewz Coffee House in Jonesboro, Illinois said they get a lot of people stopping by who are traveling from other states and with Route 3 being closed not many people were passing by their store.

“We are super excited. We are ready to get back on the flow again. We like being busy here. We work on getting our drive thru to go fast and so it’s been fast but it’s been fast because we haven’t had a lot of people in. So we are ready to get more," said Erin Collow.

She said to boost local traffic they added ice cream to their menu.

Floyd Mayberry who owns Mayberry Music in Jonesboro said he lost about half of his usual business with Routes 146 and 3 closed.

Now he's getting calls from customers asking if they can get to the store, some even saying they'll be in on Saturday.

The flood impacted Mayberry at home too. He couldn't get to his house, so he stayed in hotels for a few weeks.

Mayberry said it's the store's 52nd year and he hasn't seen anything like this.

"I’ve never remembered when you couldn’t drive to Cape Girardeau, Missouri, because, we usually if we have problems we stay at the motels in Cape and drive back and forth. But this year, we had to use alternate places to stay,” he said.

He looks forward to seeing his customers who will now be able to get to the store.

Tyler Smith works at Lotus Naturescapes in Union County and he said that a few of his regular customers easily made their way over from Missouri.

"Our business will boost up a lot. It'll get a lot better,” he said. "It's just one of those things you just had to put up with for a few weeks."

He’s ready for a different kind of flood now.

"Maybe we’ll get flood with business now instead of water. That’d be great,” he said with a laugh.

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