A portion of Massachusetts Street will be closed down for a couple of hours April 17 to accommodate the Kansas Half Marathon.

Lawrence city commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting approved a route for the event. The race will start at 7:30 a.m. and will follow a path that starts at Haskell Indian Nations University, travels through the Park Hill Neighborhood, crosses back over the Haskell campus to the Burroughs Creek Trail, travels north on the trail through east Lawrence and to downtown on Massachusetts Street and then will follow the same route back to Haskell.

Commissioners agreed to close Massachusetts Street from Eighth to 11th streets from 7:30 a.m. to 10 a.m. to accommodate the runners.

Organizers of the event said they’re expecting about 1,900 runners from more than 30 states to participate in the event. Proceeds of the event go to Lawrence’s Health Care Access program.

The city will provide about $10,000 worth of in-kind services — such as traffic control and stand-by medical assistance — to the event. The city will use money out of its transient guest tax fund to cover those costs.