Cumberland Avenue Work to Start Monday, April 6; Public Invited to Ask Questions at Meeting

Communications Director

Kristin Farley
[email protected]
(865) 215-2589

400 Main St., Room 691
Knoxville, TN 37902

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Cumberland Avenue Work to Start Monday, April 6; Public Invited to Ask Questions at Meeting

Posted: 04/02/2015
A two-year City of Knoxville project to reconstruct the Cumberland Avenue Corridor starts Monday, April 6, and anyone with questions about the construction timeline or traffic control plans is invited to a public meeting tonight.

The public meeting will be held at 5:30 p.m. tonight (Thursday, April 2), at the University of Tennessee Visitors Center, 2712 Neyland Drive. City staff will be available to answer questions, along with representatives from the contractors, KUB and engineering consultants Vaughn & Melton.

The overall project starts Monday, April 6, with utility work in the westbound lanes of Cumberland Avenue and portions of side streets between West Volunteer Boulevard and 22nd Street.

Beginning Monday, motorists should anticipate lanes closed from West Volunteer Boulevard to 21st Street to allow for a one-block tapering of traffic.

One lane of traffic will be maintained in each direction, shifted into the existing eastbound lanes.

The Cumberland Avenue Corridor Project is a City of Knoxville initiative to redesign Cumberland Avenue from Alcoa Highway east to 17th street, changing the existing four-lane street to a three-lane cross section with a raised median and left-turn lanes at intersections. Sidewalks will be widened and landscaped, and utilities will be buried, to create a more attractive, pedestrian-friendly corridor.

There are several ways that motorists and Cumberland Avenue stakeholders can stay up to date with road closure and construction updates throughout the project:

• Visit a new website, CumberlandConnect.com, and Facebook page, facebook.com/CumberlandConnect.

The website was launched by Vaughn & Melton, which is also developing an app that will send push alerts if requested to people's smartphones. Both the app and the website could host merchant coupons to help attract customers during the construction.

• Read the Cumberland Connection blog, www.CumberlandConnections.Blogspot.com, which was created by the City of Knoxville's Office of Redevelopment and which will continue to update stakeholders on the project, including public meetings, changes in traffic-control details and a look ahead to what's next in the construction timeline.

• The City's Communications Department will regularly issue media releases, which will be posted on the City's website on pending new road closures. (Media should call Communications Manager Eric Vreeland at 865-215-3480 for help coordinating interviews in covering the ongoing project.)

Click here for an overview of the City project and the construction timeline.

Construction will proceed in two phases, with Phase I (from Alcoa Highway to 22nd Street) to be completed by the end of 2015, and Phase II (from 22nd Street to just east of 17th Street) scheduled for completion in August 2017.

The Knoxville City Council on March 31 authorized the execution of contracts for the construction and construction engineering inspection work on Cumberland Avenue totaling about $18 million.

Most of the project is federally funded, with City funding totaling about $3.6 million for construction. The pledge to complete the infrastructure improvements have helped leverage major redevelopment - $200 million in private investments - along the Cumberland Avenue Corridor.