The list of Cambie Street merchants who are filing suit after being left in the lurch by the Canada Line construction is growing.
Roughly 40 businesses along the Canada Line are looking for millions in compensation after losing customers who couldn't brave the construction zone to get to their stores.
"It was very depressing for a busy store where people are coming in and out all the time to where almost nobody was walking in the store at all," said pharmacist Marvin Nider, one of the plaintiffs.
Nider says his store, Mark's Plaza Pharmacy, lost about a million dollars over the course of the construction.
The suit, filed Friday, is on top of the class action lawsuit that has already been filed, involving 250 businesses in the Cambie Village alone.
In both suits the plaintiffs claim they were devastated by the cut and cover construction method. They argue that if the Canada Line had been built with a tunnel boring machine as originally planned, the businesses would not have lost as much.
Several plaintiffs in this week's suit were businesses that failed during construction, such as Arroy-D Thai Restaurant, Don Don Noodle Caf�, and Hugo Restaurant.
TransLink won't comment on the lawsuit. But the stores are optimistic about a big payout. The fight is coming just months after a court victory by small business owner Susan Heyes, who won $600,000 in damages in a similar suit.
"The whole thing was opened up by Hazel and Company," said Nider. "She put her neck on the line and we owe her a debt of gratitude."
In the meantime business owners are waiting for the increased traffic from the Canada Line to bring revenues up to where they used to be.
