Commuters, truckers, shoppers and even professional sports teams are laying plans to deal with the closure of a 1.5-mile stretch of Interstate 65 in Gary, which starts Saturday and ends in November.

The Indiana Department of Transportation has laid out nine approved detours, some of which will send commuters eight miles or more out of their way.

"Whatever they do, it will be awful," said Ruth Best, of Miller Beach, on a recent morning at the Marquette Perk coffee shop. "Because we will all be taking the same roads and those roads are not built for that."

Best's concerns as a commuter are being echoed by businesses across the region.

"It will cause problems for the steel industry," said Jack Crotty, owner of JL Shandy Transportation Inc. "And that's what we do."

JL Shandy trucks ship steel coils and steel plate from area mills and steel service centers to destinations like Detroit, Cincinnati and Louisville.

Using detours will eat up time and fuel, as will waits at clogged ramps, raising costs for his company, Crotty said.

Most of the Gary portion of I-65 will be closed for nine months so that the bridges that carry it over the Borman Expressway (Interstate 80/94) can be reconstructed. Three ramps at the interchange there will be closed and one will remain restricted to one lane.

The Indiana Department of Transportation has been conducting regular meetings with municipalities since the interchange rebuild began in May, according to INDOT spokesman Joshua Bingham.

However, many businesses said they were caught by surprise by newspaper stories three weeks ago that I-65 would close. A meeting subsequently was arranged by the city's administration, said Gary Steelheads principal owner Jewell Harris Jr.

The I-65 closure is one more challenge that can be added to the many the Steelheads minor league basketball franchise has faced in its eight-year history, Harris said.

About 50 percent of Steelheads fans come from outside Gary, mainly from suburban communities south of the city, Harris said.

There will be plenty of wide, well-lighted routes to the Genesis Convention Center, including Broadway and U.S. 20 by way of Ind. 51, Harris said. But that may not be the perception.

"If people are not informed they might think they have to fight their way all through the side streets of Gary," Harris said. "It's the talk of it I'm worried about."

The Steelheads and such businesses as Miller Bakery Cafe, a noted restaurant in Miller Beach, say they will inform customers about detours through their Web sites and any other means they can find.

"We will try to make a positive outcome to this as much as we can," said Miller Bakery Cafe owner Gary Sanders.

At the other end of the I-65 business equation is the Westfield Southlake mall, shopping plazas and office buildings along U.S. 30 in Merrillville and Hobart.

"People will come to the mall," said Lisa DeVries, Westfield Southlake marketing director. "They will always find a way to get here."

I-65 north of the Borman is a main connector route between the Borman Expressway and the Indiana Toll Road. Indiana Toll Road Concession Co., the Toll Road's private operator, is prepared for the closure, ITR spokesman Matt Pierce said.

"It will impact everyone," Pierce said. "It will impact those who use the detour, those who use it as their usual route, and it will impact us."

The Indiana Toll Road plaza at the I-65 interchange will remain open, but much of the staff will be shifted to toll plazas in Portage and Hammond that will see increased traffic because of detours.

At the Marquette Perk coffee shop, customers have been buzzing about the closure since it was announced. The coffee shop sits about halfway between I-65 and the approved detour of Ind. 51.

Regular customer Desiree Kaminski said she likes nice roads, but not the seemingly endless construction projects needed to keep them that way. She also doesn't know if some of the designated detours can handle the flood of traffic.

"I guess it is just the lesser of two evils," Kaminski said. "Time will tell."