"We're tracking down anywhere from 10 to 20%," Steven Perticona, a manager at Anna's Pizzeria, told WRAL back in April, describing what months of one-way traffic on North Salem Street had done to his sales.
That number is the honest starting point for anyone trying to figure out what's actually going on in downtown Apex right now. Not the orange barrels, not the detour signs, but a real, measurable dent in the businesses that make Salem Street worth visiting in the first place. The easy story is "downtown is under construction, here's what's still open." The more useful story is what that dent is buying, because it isn't nothing, and understanding the trade changes how you plan your next few Saturdays here.
The Cost Is Real, and It Isn't the Part You'd Guess
North Salem Street has been down to one lane of traffic since work began in January, part of a $4.7 million overhaul that Apex Town Council approved on a 5-0 vote in December 2025. Sidewalks on both sides of the street have stayed open the entire time. Nobody has had to detour around a fence to get a slice at Anna's or a coffee three doors down. The disruption isn't access. It's rhythm. Drivers who used to swing through for a quick errand now think twice, and that hesitation is what shows up in a small business owner's monthly numbers.
The project hit a real snag this spring. Electrical design issues forced a multi-week pause in April, and WRAL reported that Mayor Jacques Gilbert was fielding frustration from business owners who'd already absorbed months of reduced foot traffic. Gilbert's message at the time was that the project remained on track to wrap by October, when two-way traffic returns to Salem Street for good.
Work resumed, and it shows. By mid-July, according to the Town's own project updates, the east side's underground utility work and paver installation were substantially finished. Crews then shifted into Phase 2, moving southbound traffic onto the new east-side lane so they could begin demolition on the west side.
| Phase | Status as of mid-July 2026 | What it looks like on the ground |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 1 (east side) | Underground infrastructure and paver installation largely complete | New sidewalk pavers visible, light pole foundations going in |
| Phase 2 (west side) | Demolition underway, southbound traffic shifted to the new east lane | A 5-foot sidewalk path kept open along west-side storefronts for customer access |
If you've felt like downtown has been in a low simmer of change all year without any single dramatic closure, that table is why. It's been a rolling handoff from one side of the street to the other, not a single event.
What $4.7 Million Is Actually Buying
Here's the part that doesn't show up in a foot-traffic complaint: the finished product is not just repaved sidewalk. The Assembly's reporting on the project describes a genuinely different Salem Street, with wider, curbless walkways designed to prioritize people over cars and a new Saunders Street Gathering Space built with pergolas, seating, outdoor games, and a digital information kiosk. The Town's project updates add specifics: American Elm trees planted in newly installed underground soil cells to give them real root room, 19-foot decorative light poles with banner-arm mounts for future street events, and pipe bollards separating the curbless travel lane from pedestrian space.
None of that reads as exciting while it's still trenched open. But it's worth naming plainly, because the businesses absorbing a 10 to 20 percent hit right now are financing a street that's being built to hold more foot traffic long-term, not less. That's the trade.
The Town Already Rehearsed Its Backup Plan
The clearest sign that Apex is treating this construction year as more than something to endure showed up in May, when PeakFest, the town's longest-running festival, didn't happen on Salem Street at all. For its 45th anniversary, the festival relocated to the Town Hall Campus at 73 Hunter Street, with Hunter Street closed to vehicle traffic from Salem Street to Laura Duncan Road for the day. Town officials reported more than 45,000 people showed up anyway, at what has been Apex's signature event since 1980.
That relocation matters beyond the trivia of where a festival happened one year. It means the town has already tested Town Hall Campus as a stand-in for its biggest single-day draw, complete with new parking access through the Saunders and Moore Street lots and a paved Strollway connecting downtown to the campus. If Salem Street construction runs long or if the town simply likes what it saw in May, that infrastructure is already proven out.
Where the Regulars Are Actually Spending August
Construction hasn't thinned out what's worth doing downtown this month, and a few specific things are worth building a week around.
- The Local Spot Passport runs through September 7, 2026, encouraging residents to check off visits to downtown businesses, according to Explore Apex. It closes out over Labor Day weekend, so there's about a month left to use it.
- The Apex Underground Market set up at Sweetwater Town Center on August 8, part of its regular monthly rotation, giving the southwest side of town its own maker-and-vendor draw independent of Salem Street.
- Rhythm & Reels, the Halle Cultural Arts Center's free outdoor concert and movie series, has been running through the summer, per the Halle's own event listings.
- A glow-in-the-dark Silent Disco murder mystery lands at the Halle on August 28, and the Triangle Environmental Symposium takes over the same venue on August 27, both confirmed on the Town's calendar.
- Popovers Cafe, a bakery specializing in sweet and savory popovers, opened this spring at 219 N. Salem Street, right in the middle of the construction zone, according to NC Triangle Dining. Someone is betting on that street.
- Kaara Indian Restaurant recently opened at 2700 Stokesdale Avenue with two dining halls, a private room, a patio, and a full bar, offering North and South Indian staples alongside roughly 15 chef signature dishes, per Business Debut's coverage. It's a reminder that Apex's dining growth isn't confined to the streets under orange cones.
- Apex Restaurant Week, an annual tradition described on the Town's own site, lets participating spots run fixed-price lunch and dinner menus, a low-stakes way to try something new downtown once it returns to the calendar.
The Town itself has been running its own campaign to keep dollars flowing to Salem Street through all of this, with a simple pitch on its project page: "Buy a gift card now, enjoy it later!" It's a small detail, but it tells you the town isn't just apologizing for the disruption. It's actively trying to route around it.
The Two-Month Countdown
If Mayor Gilbert's October target holds, Apex has roughly two more months of this in-between version of Salem Street: one lane of traffic, a walkable sidewalk on either side, and a finished product that's visibly closer than it was in April. That's a short enough window that treating this fall as something to simply wait out means missing most of it. The wider curbless sidewalks are already taking shape on the east side. The elms are already in the ground, waiting to grow into the shade they were planted for. The businesses staying open through the noise, old and brand new, are the ones who'll be there when two-way traffic comes back.
Apex has been rebuilding its own Main Street in public, dollar by dollar and lane by lane, and the people who understand what it's turning into are going to enjoy the next two months more than the people who are just waiting for the cones to disappear.
Ensemble Properties tracks changes like this in every Triangle neighborhood we work in, not because a streetscape project moves home values overnight, but because knowing a place this well is the only way to actually serve people who live here or are thinking about it. If you've got questions about what's changing in Apex or anywhere else in the Triangle, the team at Ensemble Properties is always happy to talk it through.
