Bernards in South Lubbock County
Even though the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) reopened the U.S. Highway 87/Farm to Market Road 41 intersection, business is not back to normal for Bernards – a gas station/convenience and liquor store that’s suffered from an abandoned road project.
But they haven’t closed the business.
We called Bernards to start this follow-up story but no one answered. We drove to check on the store and intersection to find lights out and door locked.
It turned out owners Philip Thrash and his wife Herrlinda had to travel that day. There was no one else to run the place.
Bernards is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday. It used to be open until 11 p.m. But the Thrashes can no longer afford to hire employees.
“We’re still trying to operate on a shoestring and keep the doors open for as long as we can,” Thrash said.
Construction on a new overpass at the intersection started in October 2021 – blocking both southbound drivers and residents living west of the store.
The overpass is not done, but on August 6, TxDOT reopened the intersection so people could get to Bernards from all directions.
But it’s not brought back the customers.
They have not come back
Customers from the north and to the west of the store no longer have to drive an extra two miles to get to Bernards. Thrash hopes folks will get back in the habit of coming in.
“We figure it’s going to take a while,” Thrash said. “It’s been negligible. I mean, we haven’t really seen anything in sales.”
Some in the community have been extremely supportive, he said.
“We’ve seen a couple of customers that we haven’t seen in a very long time. … We’re just hoping that it’s just a matter of time before things catch on.”
In the meantime, staying open is a balancing act, he said.
“There’s certain inventory that we won’t stock because the expiration dates are for 60-90 days. And there’s stuff that has expiration dates of a year or longer that you have to buy in such quantities that we still wouldn’t be able to sell them in the specified time,” he said.
Thrash is considering a few changes.
“We may have to look at maybe opening earlier, see if we catch a little bit more morning traffic. We did buy a banner that we put out in the mornings and say that we are open,” Thrash said.
He’s hoping word of mouth will get out.
“But I will tell you that there are people who are still fearful of that intersection that do not want to travel. They won’t travel to that intersection,” Thrash said.
He claimed there were two recent crashes there.
No progress on the overpass or a lawsuit
Concrete beams still stand where maybe an overpass will one day carry drivers.
TxDOT hired Allen Butler Construction and then accused the company of not meeting expectations. A source in the company blamed TxDOT for the disagreement. (Click here to see our previous coverage.)
Either way, TxDOT held the company in default and removed it from the project in July 2023.
“We do not have a definite date on when work will restart,” said Ed Goebel, an engineer with TxDOT.
“We’ve taken steps to resume the normal flow of traffic by removing the detour and reopening the crossover,” Goebel also said in a written statement.
The overpass project was no longer listed this week on the TxDOT project tracker. LubbockLights.com asked for an update this week on finding a replacement contractor. So far, we don’t have an answer.
In December 2023, Bernards parent company FamFive sued TxDOT. The lawsuit said the government must pay if it takes your property for a public project. Bernards profits were, in a sense, taken away by TxDOT’s project.
TxDOT claims sovereign immunity. In simplistic terms, you cannot sue the government without permission from the government. (Click here to see our previous coverage.)
It’s been months since anything happened in the lawsuit. Thrash is not expecting any real progress until June of next year.
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