Cookeville will begin its major fall resurfacing project Monday, which may cause some traffic delays.
City Manager James Mills said portions of South Cedar Avenue, South Walnut Avenue, South Madison Avenue, Reagan Avenue, and South Dixie Avenue are included in the project.
“Well, most of these have to do with recent utility work that’s been completed over the summer,” Mills said. “It’s left them in less than ideal condition. Some used worse terms than that, that we have heard. Especially, Walnut. South Walnut is in really rough condition.”
Mills said the plan is to resurface Walnut Avenue from Spring Street to Jackson Avenue, but also mentioned the city is considering paving Walnut all the way to Interstate Drive. Mills said on South Cedar, the paving will include the right-of-way and the parking lots for property owners.
“As part of that, we will have to remove the stop blocks there and do some other removal of materials to get ready to pave the Cedar section, and the crews for Public Works will do that,” Mills said. “There will also have to be some milling work done by Vulcan, which will start either Thursday or Friday of next week, along Spring Street, and most of Walnut will have to be milled before we can pave. That’s supposed to happen towards the end of next week.”
The project will consist of resurfacing an estimated 1.1 miles of streets across several areas.
Cookeville has invested an estimated $5.5 million in road improvement projects over the past three fiscal years. This project will cost the city an estimated $1.8 million. Mills said he believes that in the long term $1.8 million is not enough.
“We are gonna have to continue to add that and be conscientious about how we come up with the revenue to cover that,” Mills said. “But just three years ago, we were only allocating $600,000- $800,000 a year. So this council has greatly increased the amount. But for us to be able to keep up, we are going to continue to look at ways to increase the amount of funds we put into resurfacing.”
Mills said the goal is to keep at least one lane open at all times for all sections that are being resurfaced.
