Sanibel Causeway construction affecting Lighthouse Restaurant

Repairing the Sanibel Causeway after recent storms has caused more than just traffic back-ups.

WINK News showed you on Tuesday all the progress being made as crews work toward finishing sometime in 2027.

Local businesses in the area are having difficulty with the traffic changes.

One restaurant in particular, the Lighthouse Restaurant, sits right before you go over the Causeway.

They said the construction is causing confusion for their customers.

WINK News reporter Jillian Haggerty was at the restaurant to see the problem with all of the construction.

The confusion is caused by the orange cones; if you don’t already know where the Lighthouse Restaurant is, you might miss the turn and have no choice but to drive across the Causeway and back.

The assistant manager we spoke with on Wednesday said it’s not just a traffic nightmare, but it’s also hurting business.

Brian Magana, the assistant manager at Lighthouse Restaurant, said, “I think there has been at least one accident, to my knowledge, over the last couple of weeks as traffic has been backing up.”

There is heavy traffic and some confusion for drivers on McGregor Boulevard as construction continues on the north side of the Sanibel Causeway.

It’s progress for people who travel to Sanibel but a major setback for the Lighthouse Restaurant.

Magana said, “Business is considerably down over the last couple of years. We’re probably from I’d say 10 to 25 percent down at least.”

He also said with business down, they had to make cuts.

“The staff, I had to cut back on staffing, so we had to run a skeleton crew all summer and were still running a much smaller crew just for the fact we don’t want anybody working and not living properly,” Magana explained.

We asked Nancy Connolly, who’s lived in the area for 36 years and often stops in at the Lighthouse Restaurant what it’s been like since the construction started.

“It was just awful. It was a disaster,” Connolly said.

Despite traffic and confusion, other customers are staying hopeful and are excited about the next steps to rebuilding Sanibel.

One of the customers at the Lighthouse Restaurant told WINK, “But I think it will be worth it in the long run because everybody misses Sanibel.”

We spoke with FDOT, which said that whenever they have projects like this one going on, they try their best to work with businesses.

They said they did contact the Lighthouse Restaurant to set up a meeting on Sept. 1, but they said that the restaurant canceled the meeting. FDOT is trying to get in touch with them to come up with a resolution.