Gloucester Point district supervisor Bobby Crewe has faced a huge conundrum during his first term in office—and we are not talking about the political issues that have rocked the county and the board of supervisors during that time.

During his first 3½ years, Crewe has been the board member whose constituents are most directly affected by the necessary, expensive, and utterly disruptive improvements being wrought by the Virginia Department of Transportation upon the county’s southern gateway of Route 17.

How to respond? At one end, the state is making this extremely busy arterial highway safer and, everyone hopes, more efficient.

But at the other extreme, the old-time Route 17 businesses—those closest to the Coleman Bridge, where the community first took life and from which it expanded—have taken huge hits on their trade during all the lane shutdowns, re-routings and excavations.

Supervisor Crewe has responded with a series of public meetings, o...