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SOUTHERN PINES, N.C.--Downtown Southern Pines will drive a little smoother after a paving project that has been delayed since November.

The road work started Sunday morning, around the time James Williams sells his newspapers to folks driving by on their way to church. When the crews came out around 10:00 a.m., he lost his usual spot.

"That's when they closed off everything, they came and put the cones up. Once they put cones up, I was out of luck so I moved over to the other block," said Williams.

Crews started today by making patches and repairs on parts of the road that were damaged. Starting Sunday night at 6:00 p.m., they'll work overnight to repave five blocks of Broad Street between Vermont and Massachusetts avenues.

The paving project was originally supposed to be completed in November of last year, but local store owners lobbied to have it moved to the summer, to minimize the impact to their business.

Whitney Parker co-owns a jewelery story on Broad Street.

"Yeah, it's inconvenient but they have to do it, so you can't really do anything but just deal with it", says Parker

So far, the impact to local residents hasn't been much of a burden, but the work has just started. It is only scheduled to last a week, and the majority of the work is being done overnight.