Mixed Reactions Near the Site by Etta Sanders First there was the destruction. Now, here's comes the construction. With the start of rebuilding at the World Trade Center site just a few months away, residents, businesses and workers adjacent to the site are beginning to consider the impacts of a decade or more of massive, simultaneous building, road and transit projects on their doorstep. During the most intense years of construction, it is estimated that more than 2,000 construction vehicles a day will converge on Lower Manhattan, many of them outside Andy Jurinko's window. "Everyone is a little nervous," said Jurinko, who lives at 125 Cedar St., the 26-unit residential building closest to the site. Jurinko and his wife, Pat Moore, were displaced from their home for more than a year in the wake of the terrorist attack. After the effort and expense of making their apartment habitable again, he said, "It would be ironic if we had to evacuate because of the construction." Mary Dierickx also lives in the building. Her windows face the badly damaged Duetsche Bank building, which will be demolished. "I'm hoping residents' lives will be thought about when the construction begins," she said. "The priorities are the schedule, the budget, and the political considerations. We're very low on the list of priorities." Residents at Gateway Plaza in Battery Park City are also anxious about how their quality of life will be affected, especially by the reconstruction of West Street, according to Linda Belfer, president of Gateway's tenant association. "We have tremendous concerns about noise, the creation of pollution in the air, the inability to get in and out of Battery Park City easily," she said. But at O'Hara Restaurant and Pub, at 120 Cedar St., manager Michael Keane is hopeful. The bar is doing about half the business it did prior to Sept. 11. He anticipates that having hundreds of construction workers down the block could be a boost. "We don't know what's going to happen," he said. "When they were working on the PATH at least we'd get some workers coming in for lunch." Charlie Collitti, manager at Stanley's Cobbler Shop, at 11 Thames St., feels the same. He sees a tremendous upside to the construction, however noisy it may be. "If anything, I think it will bring more people down here. More people, more feet, more shoes," Collitti said. "If we survived what we've already survived, we'll make it through this," he added. Geoff Feder, a manager at Cookie Island, a coffee and pastry shop at 189 Broadway, was less optimistic. "Tourists come down here, but they don't buy anything," he said. "The weekends are dead. Businesses down here are folding left and right. Construction workers will help, but you can't build your long term business around constructions workers." Employees of the New York State Department of Health are apprehensive about returning to work near the site. More than 200 of them signed a petition protesting a plan to move their offices early next year from Midtown to 90 Church Street, the federal post office building. They have no objections to working Downtown, said Denyce Duncan Lacy, a spokeswoman for the Public Employees Federation, but "they don't want to move into a building where there's going to be construction for the next 10 years." Mary Dierickx figures that for her building, the coming construction may not be much worse than the dust and noise from the clearing of the site, and the frequent screeching of the PATH train wheels that she and her neighbors have already been living with. What happens around the site is more worrisome. "Closing off the streets and the sidewalks, that's more important to the residents," she said. Her neighbor Andy Jurinko, 64, wonders if this is how he wants to spend his retirement. But he's optimistic about the long term. "It's going to be a great neighborhood in 20 years," he said.