Akron is one of four cities nationwide — and by far the smallest — to win a $5 million competitive grant to help revitalize public spaces downtown.
The “Reimagining the Civic Commons” award comes from a coalition of four national foundations and will officially be announced Thursday in Philadelphia.
The other grant winners are large communities: Chicago, Detroit and Memphis, Tenn.
“We really feel this puts our community on the map,” said Dan Rice, president and chief executive officer of the Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition.
Rice, along with Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan and others, will be in Philadelphia to accept the award from the JPB Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Kresge Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation. The grant will be matched with an additional $5 million in support from local partners.
The Canalway group, in cooperation with the local office of the Knight Foundation, Downtown Akron Partnership and others, have been working on projects along a 3-mile stretch of the Towpath Trail to promote economic and social activity in and around downtown.
Those efforts — which also were done to win the grant — have included everything from installing a dedicated, protected bike lane on a portion of South Main Street to offering free pontoon boat rides on Summit Lake to putting a log cabin on Cascade Plaza to encourage workers to leave their office buildings.
The projects, led by Rice, have been done in partnership with the city, Akron Civic Theatre, Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority, Downtown Akron Partnership, Summit County and Summit Metro Parks.
The overall goal is to breathe new life into downtown, which has faced a growing commercial vacancy rate and offers few residential options not geared toward University of Akron students.
It’s also seen as a way to reduce the economic segregation between office workers and those in the struggling neighborhoods just south of downtown.
Instead of venturing into the city’s urban core, people using the trail often stop at Route 59 on the downtown’s northern end and at Summit Lake on the southern side — a behavior that Akron leaders want to change.
Organizers hope to change perceptions about downtown using the trail and other public spaces, as well.
“If Cascade Plaza, Lock 4, Lock 3, Lock 2 and Park East are vibrant places, maybe developers are more likely to take the risk of converting commercial vacancy to residential,” said Kyle Kutuchief, local program director for the Knight Foundation. “Maybe it’s not so hard to get banks to invest in these deals because they see momentum in the city.”
Looking for inspiration
Organizers will use the grant over the next three years to research successful efforts in other communities and launch new projects here.
Using a baseball analogy, Kutuchief stressed that the projects don’t need to be grand slams. The local coalition will look to make an impact through singles and even bunts, he said.
Rice and Kutuchief, who are excited about being a pilot for mid-size cities, said they are still gathering feedback from the public and determining what to do next.
But the ideas include putting a bike share and benches at Summit Lake, offering more entertainment at Lock 4, beautifying the trail as it enters downtown from the north and making sure that Akron is viewed as a trailhead for the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
Rice said he also would like to see Akron Children’s Hospital take more advantage of the neighboring canal, wondering why a splash area can’t be created for patients.
In addition to visiting other cities, Rice and Kutuchief said they want to bring leaders from other communities to Akron to show off the efforts here.
They cited not only the Towpath Trail, but also the new Bud and Susie Rogers Garden at the Akron Art Museum as examples as innovative local projects.
“We’re at this tipping point,” Kutuchief said. “We’re so close. The cities that we envy are going after this strategy. ...Why not us? Why can’t we go for it, too?”
Rick Armon can be reached at 330-996-3569 or rarmon@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter at @armonrickABJ.