ATLANTA — After a fire started under a bridge on Cheshire Bridge Road last week, one business owner on Wednesday said she felt like she couldn't catch a break.
Zola Mandissa is the owner of Zola Z Canvas Creations, a barbershop located on Cheshire Bridge Road and Wellbourne Drive, right next to where the most recent road closure starts.
A portion of Cheshire Bridge closed after last week's fire. 11Alive asked the City of Atlanta when it expects the road to reopen but hasn't heard back yet.
"I hope that the City steps up and does something to help these businesses on this road," Atlanta native Mandissa said.
She added that businesses feel like they've been hit with something every year lately.
Mandissa and her brother used to work off 14th Street before they moved their barber shop to the spot on Cheshire Bridge in January 2020. Then, COVID hit.
"Real hard, like around end of March, it was a struggle the first two months," she said.
After making it through COVID, Mandissa said they were hit again the next year.
In 2021, a fire happened underneath a portion of Cheshire Bridge, shutting down part of the road for nearly 15 months.
"It's always something over here on Cheshire Bridge," Mandissa said. "It's like what's happening over here."
She added two days after last week's fire, a car hit a tree outside her business, catching the tree on fire and blocking off the road.
Mandissa said the continual closures are negatively impacting her business.
"It impacts us really, really hard," she said. "Because a lot of times we're slow because people think we're closed, or they don't want to come down this way because they think it's a bad area."
Mandissa was the only one working in the shop on Wednesday afternoon.
"We had two other people, but with the bridge being closed, we had to let people go," she said of the 2021 bridge closure's impact. "So it’s just me and (my brother) for right now."
Mandissa said they're also losing potential customers because people aren't driving by and seeing their business.
"That was the pass-through traffic for a lot of people," Mandissa explained. "They would come by, they would see the building, 'Oh okay, you’re a barber shop here.' They would stop by, but people can't do that because they can't even get down the road."
Mandissa said she and her brother are concerned about what will happen to the business and how they're going to keep their doors open.
"Oh, we're very worried," Mandissa said. "Me and my brother are very worried because we don't know what the hell is gonna happen over here."