Anna Barounis says she’s concerned about the long-term future of her business, Giorgiana’s market in the South End, because a recent road redesign has devastated her recovery from the pandemic and George Floyd looting “nightmare.”

The market, nestled along Tremont Street, has been a mainstay in the South End since 1972 when Barounis’ parents first opened the grocery and sandwich spot, but she says she “could just cry sitting here because where did it all go?”

Tremont Street, one of Boston’s most prominent thoroughfares, stretches from Government Center through several neighborhoods. It underwent a years-long redesign to address safety concerns.

According to city officials, Tremont Street had been in the top 3% of streets across Boston for pedestrian crashes. That prompted the wide four-lane road to transform into predominantly two lanes — one each way — except for at the busiest signalized intersections.

Bike lanes and in-lane bus stops with boarding islands are featured along the road in the bucolic neighborhood dotted with high-end boutiques and trendy restaurants.

The redesign has directly impacted Giorgiana’s as Barounis estimates at least 30 parking lots have been lost near her Tremont Street market. Business has dropped roughly 50% compared to before construction started in late 2021, she said.

The store has gone from three people working in the kitchen at lunch to one, Barounis said. That has left her relying more on catering than walk-in business, she added.

Around 10:15 a.m. Saturday, roughly 10 customers visited the store compared to the 30 in the past who Barounis said she’d see at that time of the morning coming to pick up breakfast sandwiches and coffee.

“It just keeps getting worse,” Barounis told the Herald at the store Saturday morning. “What I’m seeing is people are now avoiding the South End. I see a loss of business, you can see ‘for lease’ signs everywhere. My concern is, say I do go out of business, who’s going to want to rent my space?”

Planning for the redesign began in 2018 after two people were killed while crossing the road, in 2015 and 2017. After several years of community engagement, the city completed designs in early 2021, with construction beginning later that year, a city spokesperson told the Herald.

The spokesperson added that the city “recently met with residents and small business owners in the South End.”

“As part of ongoing work, the City is evaluating infrastructure for functionality and quality of life,”  the spokesperson said. “Earlier this month in response to feedback from small businesses in the area, the City brought back meters on Tremont Street and made curb regulation changes to increase parking availability and improve loading.”

City Councilor Ed Flynn, whose district includes the South End, is calling for a hearing to “review the functionality” of the Tremont Street redesign.

Flynn, who said pedestrian safety is his priority, has raised concerns about “difficulties for emergency vehicles such as ambulances and fire trucks to pass through during peak traffic hours” and how residents and local businesses have “noted that these changes were done with minimal neighborhood collaboration.”

“Any time we make a decision we need to consider long-term impacts and worst-case scenarios,” Flynn said at a council meeting last week. “We have to have a Tremont Street that works for everybody.”

Flynn has faced heat around his feelings toward bus and bike lanes. Safety advocates and cyclists alleged the councilor tried to select public input that aligned with his opposition on a Boylston Street project in the Back Bay, last spring.

Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, whose district also shares a part of Tremont Street, said some of her constituents have expressed opposition to the so-called “road diet.” She’s proposing a transportation study on how a road redesign in one area impacts the surrounding neighborhood.

“I do have mixed feelings … bike lanes are a good thing, safe streets are a good thing,” Fernandes Anderson said last week, “but here in this area, constituents have shown that it would encroach on small businesses, displacing small businesses.”

The Wu administration is being responsive to critical feedback from city residents and business owners who have said her efforts to install bus and bike lanes have hindered their livelihoods.

Earlier this month, Wu announced she’d follow through on plans to initiate a 30-day review of all street changes that were made during her first term in office, over the last three years. That came after her administration opted to remove a bus lane on Boylston Street and another on Summer Street in South Boston.

As of last November, the city had built 15 total miles of new protected bike lanes under a bike network expansion and safer streets initiative since 2022, at about $2.25 million, the mayor’s office said.

“I am afraid that … we have become a little bit desensitized to the conversation around safety,” Councilor Sharon Durkan said last week. “It is very important that we realize that in the culture war that’s happening around bikes and other infrastructure, we do need to center those who are most vulnerable; pedestrians, bike users.”

Barounis told the Herald that she’s not aware of what the city is doing next in terms of the Tremont Street redesign but emphasized that what had been a “major road” is no longer “desirable.”

On June 3, 2020, vandals protesting George Floyd’s death broke into Giorgiana’s, destroying the market’s custom-installed windows, disconnecting and toppling an ATM machine, shattering her merchandise, and destroying computer equipment.

They stole the finest liquor off Barounis’ shelves and pillaged Lottery tickets. Barounis said the vandals caused roughly $200,000 in damage amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We were starting to make that rebound,” she recounted. “The bike lanes are worse than COVID, for me. Financially, this is my pandemic.”

A cyclist rides along on Tremont Street in the South End. (Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald)
Anna Barounis, owner of Giorgiana’s stands inside her business that was looted during a George Floyd riot in June 2020. (Herald file photo)