Downtown streets will be closed starting March 2, 2020 for street and traffic changes around the new Salem Police headquarters (Courtesy/City of Salem)

Expect more traffic in downtown Salem starting Monday as the City of Salem finishes construction on the new downtown police station.

Liberty Street Northeast will be closed from Marion Street Northeast to the Mill Creek Bridge, just north of Division Street Northeast, starting Monday, March 2, the city said in a news release.

Division Street between Liberty and Commercial Street Northeast will also be closed.

During the closure, construction crews will work on upgrades to the streets to add more on-street parking, sidewalks, landscaping and change traffic signals. The changes are expected to improve bike and pedestrian safety, the release said.

Northbound traffic on Liberty Street will re-open in early April. Southbound traffic on Liberty will remain closed through early June.

Exterior construction on the police station was completed last August. The building is expected to be finished in September, according to a city timeline.

Reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241.

Rachel Alexander

Rachel Alexander is Salem Reporter’s managing editor. She joined Salem Reporter when it was founded in 2018 and covers education, economic development and a little bit of everything else. She’s been a journalist in Oregon and Washington for over a decade and is a past president of Oregon's Society of Professional Journalists chapter. Outside of work, you can often find her gardening or with her nose buried in a book.