Four national foundations want to see cities “reimagining the civic commons.” On Thursday, they selected Akron, along with Chicago, Detroit and Memphis, as early prototypes, and it is not hard to see why Akron made the list. Consider part of the description of the concept in announcing the $5 million grants to each city, the foundations looking to invest in “coordinated programming, design and technology that create connected and environmentally sustainable public spaces.”
Akron already has been working in this way. Look at the secure bike lane emerging downtown, plus the potted flowers, the cabin at Cascade Plaza and the Community Day at Summit Lake. They have complemented more established efforts (the new and delightful Buddy and Susie Rogers garden at the art museum) and other recent experiments to bring more vitality to the city’s core.
These pursuits have gained speed of late with the arrival of the new administration of Mayor Dan Horrigan, aided by the leadership of the Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition, the Downtown Akron Partnership, the Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority and other organizations. The connector is the Towpath Trail, the stretch starting at the north end of downtown and ending at Summit Lake.
The idea is to leverage the trail to help address leading problems the city faces, population loss and slowing momentum downtown (reflected in the vacancy rate). A key benefit of the grant from the foundations, including the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, is the opportunity to accelerate further the pace, and connect with the other cities, accessing best practices and what they have learned.
The foundations want cities to experiment in countering the trends toward social fragmentation and economic inequities, communities and neighborhoods increasingly separated, lacking shared experiences, let alone common purpose. Philadelphia was the first city to head down this path, starting last year, and it already has yielded some positive results.
In Akron, the economic divide hardly could be more stark than between those with higher incomes who gather at the north end of downtown and those who struggle and reside in Summit Lake. The towpath becomes a way to span the divide, say, as a conduit to the lake regaining its appeal of long ago and downtown becoming more of a shared space with improvements to Locks 2 and 4.
The possibilities are many, from enhancing the Park East area south of downtown to securing downtown as an entry to the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (yes, it’s that close!). The objective is to attract, and welcome, a wide range of people to the city center — to work, eat, play and even live.
That won’t be easy. Little is in an aging industrial city. Kyle Kutuchief, the Knight program director in Akron, talks about accumulating bunts and singles, reflecting recent hard lessons learned. At the same time, the city must have ambition, or set its sights high. That is the promise of the grant from the foundations, Akron with a start and now with new resources, its future connected to something in its past — the towpath.