Next week, anticipate overnight closures of a section of 17th Street and the continuous closure of one block of an east-west alley south of Cumberland Avenue as part of the reconstruction of Cumberland Avenue.

From 10 p.m. Monday, May 23, through 6 a.m. Tuesday, May 24, Southern Constructors Inc. crews will be installing electrical duct banks across 17th Street, between Cumberland and White avenues. The overnight closures will be repeated Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Southbound motorists on 17th Street will be detoured onto White Avenue to 16th Street to connect with Cumberland Avenue. Motorists wishing to access northbound 17th Street from Cumberland will be detoured onto 16th Street, then onto Clinch Avenue.

Meanwhile, Southern Constructors Inc. will be closing a section of South Alley (the alley running parallel with Cumberland and Lake avenues) between 18th and 19th streets from 6 a.m. Monday, May 23, through 6 p.m. Thursday, May 26, to perform maintenance work on the sanitary sewer system.

The infrastructure upgrades are part of the City of Knoxville’s $17 million Cumberland Avenue reconstruction, to be completed by August 2017.

The reconstruction will change the existing four-lane Cumberland between 22nd and 17th streets to a three-lane cross section with 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.

More information is available at CumberlandConnect.com, on the Cumberland Connect Facebook page at facebook.com/CumberlandConnect, and on the Cumberland Connect phone app. Or text VFL to 313131 to get text messages on the most current traffic updates.