Store owners at Ottawa's Westgate Shopping Centre say ongoing construction around the mall is hurting their business.

Ted Barkun owns Cozzy Coverings. He said his business is down by almost 45 per cent because of ongoing construction around Westgate Shopping Centre. (CBC)

During the past two years parts of Carling Avenue and Merivale Road around the mall have been dug up at various times, causing lane reductions and detours as major water main and road reconstruction was completed.

After being closed a couple of times before, Merivale Road north of the mall to Island Park Drive is closed again.

Some shop owners said spreading out the construction has made it hard to lure back customers.

Ted Barkun's Cozzy Coverings store has been in mall for 20 years.

"Nightmare. A nightmare," he said.

Councillor says she'll help efforts to bring customers back

Barkun said his in-store business is down by almost 45 per cent, and that busy Christmas traffic was cut off last year from September to December when the Highway 417 off ramp at Carling was closed.

"Nobody [could] get into the mall, and if they did, it was through great difficulty," he said.

"The only time the Councillors will respond to anything is if it's an election year. If it's not an election year, why should we talk to you?"

Coun. Katherine Hobbs, who represents the area, said the construction will be finished in two weeks.

"We definitely tried to accelerate this whole process, but with the kind of work that had to be done here, there were limited crews that were available to do it," she said. "It was specialized work … so it was difficult to do this work at night."

Hobbs said she'll work with retailers to try to bring customers back.