Several students from Reed Middle School 7th grade English Pre-AP/Academics interviewed business along Main Street in Duncanville and asked their opinions about the Main Street Project. Here are a few of their letters:

Dear Suburban Newspaper,
The Main street project was a necessary undertaking in order to better stimulate the economy in Duncanville. We recently interviewed a business after the Main Street construction had ceased. The business we interviewed was a stock exchange known as Edward Jones Investments. When the construction on Main Street first started, it severely damaged their former economic stability. However, they also said that after the construction ended, Main Street became a more inviting place and helped them regain their profits. Throughout the construction the business had several points where they had almost gone bankrupt. They did say however, that they were eventually thankful for the construction after it had ended. Here are some of the questions and answers, please excuse me for some of the answers here are not word for word. The first question we asked was the most basic of all of them. “How did the construction affect your business”? The answer had to do with a specific age group, in this case elderly people. “Most of the elderly people that usually come to us had a hard time doing so because of the construction happening. Busier people just couldn’t really get here at all. The next question was another predictable one. “Has income increased at all after the construction ended”? The answer was, yet again a predictable answer. “Yes, after the construction ended our income increased exponentially.” We needed to ask a better thought out question. “If you could’ve changed the construction before it ended, how would you have changed it”? The answer was a little different than what we had thought of. “No, I think the construction was fine. I didn’t really see any lingering problems after it ended, so it must have had a good plan from the beginning”. Those are just some of the many questions we asked the representative at Edward Jones Investments. I hope you take this letter into consideration if you ever decide to write about the Main Street Project in Duncanville, Texas.
Thanks. Sincerely,
Keoni Mahilum, Byron Adkins, Anthony Limbrick, Javier Navarrete, Don Mlo, Christian Estrada

Letter to Suburban
The experiences we’ve had during this project have been wonderful. We have walked all down Main Street to the different businesses. It’s looking great, I’m sure this will do wonders for Duncanville.
The first day my group and I visited Duncanville Television, the young lady there told us she was against the project simply because business was down during the construction.
“They tore up the side walk to my store,” she said.
“So if you wanted to bring a big television in for repair you would have to park across the street and carry the TV all the way over here and it was an inconvenience for the customers so they stopped coming.”
She also said there were some good things about this project.
She stated that this project is making Main Street look much better, but she’ll be happier when they complete the project.
During this project I have learned how much everything can affect businesses. By tearing up the side walk in front of the businesses it makes it much harder for customers to come in, and this would cause business to slow. So money wouldn’t come in, and bills wouldn’t be paid. All though this construction was for a good reason its effects are bad. For instance, the donut shop on Main had the most construction in front, the sidewalk was torn up and any side entrance was enabled this caused people to go to different locations. A lot of businesses were frustrated with this work now they are just glad it’s over. This is everything I’ve learned during this project,
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Alexia Culton