Surely some of these costs / economic activities are just like the parable of the broken window? For example, the meal makers. Construction works buy their lunches from shops nearby - that's great for those shops. But how is this improving the economy? Those workers would have needed lunches anyway. If they weren't working, they could have made their lunches at home, and not had to eat out. It would have (probably) been cheaper for them than buying lunches from the local shops.

So maybe the workers spent more money buying their lunches, but that's just extra inefficiency, and not extra economic acitivity. Just like the broken window, the workers spend more in one area and so have less money to spend elsewhere.