Albany

There will be two road closures in downtown Albany over the weekend that will impact popular thoroughfares in the city.

On Friday night the city closed North Pearl Street between Pine Street and State Street to traffic, as well as on-street parking, to make way for a large crane and support vehicles that will be doing work over the weekend on the roof of 40 North Pearl St., an office building that also includes the Pearl Street Diner.

That block of North Pearl Street won't reopen to traffic until 6 a.m. on Monday when the work is completed, and a detour will be in place re-routing traffic.

At 7 a.m. on Saturday, repairs to the pavement on the South Mall Expressway that connects I-787 to the the Empire State Plaza will prevent motorists from driving all the way around the expressway loop.

The pavement repairs follow earlier repairs to the water main pipe.

Under the closures, motorists that drive westbound on the South Mall Expressway toward Empire State Plaza will have to exit at South Swan Street instead of being able to loop around through the eastbound tunnel that brings motorists back to 787 or allows them to drive onto Madison Avenue where the New York State Museum is located.

No traffic will be allowed in that eastbound tunnel of the South Mall Expressway during the repairs, and South Swan Street from Madison Avenue to the eastbound loop will be closed except to local traffic accessing Hudson Avenue.

The road closures will end when the pavement work is completed.