Westside I-285 shutdown begins as GDOT says full closure will speed up construction timeline

All lanes of I-285 between Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. and Cascade Rd. are temporarily closing Friday night as the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) continues a major reconstruction project on Atlanta's west side. 

Drivers will be detoured off I-285 at Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. and Cascade Road, with traffic routed onto local surface streets.

GDOT told CBS News Atlanta it considered different approaches before moving forward with the full closures, but those would have dragged out the project for several years.

"By doing it this way, we were able to cut the project down from six years to three years," said GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale, "and we certainly understand that the disruption is inconvenient, but it will be a shorter amount of time. It also makes best use of taxpayer dollars. So we're really maximizing the work that we are doing, rebuilding this age stretch of roadway in the shortest amount of time possible for our contractors."

Business owners along the corridor are worried about what this weekend could look like.

Angela Ingram, the owner of Cafe Bartique said she's happy the work is getting done but not happy about the impact of the closure of the Cascade Road and MLK. 

"We're concerned with the shutdown," she said. "Last month, we saw a 20% decrease in sales and that hits our bottom line.

Collette Brown is a hair stylist at Bond Salon Suites off Cascade Road, and said her concerns extend beyond traffic.

"I have a lot of elderly clients that really are not going to know where to go, and then I have my people for Saturday morning," Brown said. "They're going to be late, and it's going to inconvenience my whole day, and I'm probably going to lose money. I really wish they would do it, like at nighttime or something every other weekend at night and just don't close it for the whole three four days."

Some businesses say the closure will keep customers away.

"It will impact business and make us slow. The first weekend of the shutdown, we were tremendously slow,"  Laqwana Smith, a manager at Wingstop on Cascade Road, said.

Smith says she's concerned about the closure. 

"Right now, we're steady. When they shut it down, we don't really have that much business," Smith said. 

Smith says the project will impact their bottom line. 

"Sometimes it's $10,000 over the weekends or around $7000. But when it's close, we probably got $2000. It's a huge difference," Smith said. 

A few doors down, at Gocha's Breakfast Bar on Cascade, manager Latasha Lloyd agrees.

"Morning revenue slowed down," Lloyd said. 

She says the restaurant normally sees around 300 customers on an average Saturday. She says that was not the case during the last closure 3 weeks ago. 

"We lost a quarter of the number of customers that normally come out," Lloyd said. 

"We love our job. This is also our livelihood. Any time business and their revenue is impacted. So are the staff members," Lloyd said. 

Although the shutdown hurts business, she understands the construction has to get done. 

"A lot of these decisions are in the best interest for the people that live here in Georgia long term. So I think it has to be done. There isn't really a perfect time," Lloyd said. 

The closure begins Friday at 7 p.m. and lasts until Monday at 5 a.m.