ANTICIPATE PAVING ON, NEAR CUMBERLAND AVENUE THIS WEEK
POSTED May 16, 2017
As the City’s 28-month $17 million reconstruction of the Cumberland Avenue Corridor nears completion in August, contractor crews will be paving this week on Cumberland Avenue, 17th Street and 18th Street.
The paving work by Southern Constructors Inc. begins at 6 a.m. Wednesday, May 17, and will continue through Friday evening.
The last section of the eastbound lanes on Cumberland Avenue, between 19th and 16th streets, will be paved to the new subgrade in preparation for the last section of median to be installed in June. (A final paving will be done upon substantial completion of the project later this summer.) Motorists will maintain the current traffic pattern on Cumberland during this week’s paving.
A section of South 18th Street, between Cumberland and an alley south of Cumberland, will be closed from 6 a.m. Wednesday until 6 p.m. Thursday. Motorists should take South 19th Street or Melrose Place as an alternate route.
From 6 a.m. Wednesday until 6 p.m. Friday, the far right northbound lane of 17th Street will be closed between Cumberland and the alley north of Cumberland while SCI crews patch the pavement.
Additional paving will be done on South 22nd and South 21st streets with flagging around the work areas when paving is underway.
The Cumberland Avenue reconstruction project began with Knoxville Utilities Board infrastructure improvements in April 2015, and it’s scheduled to be completed by August 2017. The existing four-lane Cumberland between 22nd and 17th streets is being remade into a safer, more pedestrian-friendly corridor with a three-lane cross section, a raised median and left-turn lanes at intersections. An earlier phase of work on the western end of Cumberland focused on improving traffic flow between the Alcoa Highway ramps and 22nd Street; that phase finished at the end of 2015, on time and under budget.