Akron officials will spend $250,000 on planning and preparation efforts for its upcoming bicentennial celebration.
Akron City Council unanimously approved the appropriation Monday.
The celebration officially begins Dec. 6, 2024 – Akron’s official 200th anniversary - and events are planned throughout 2025, including a parade, food festivals, bike-a-thons and performances.
Earlier this year, the city established a nonprofit, Akron200 Inc., to lead the planning process and receive and distribute grant funding.
The individuals involved in the planning process are in a “full sprint,” Mark Greer, director of Akron200 Inc.
“We are really looking forward to a year of engaging, inclusive events,” Greer told city council members Monday. “We want this to be an intergenerational celebration for all of Akron, touching all of our neighborhoods, all of our communities.”
The planning group is drawing on the city’s centennial celebration in 1925 for inspiration, said Dave Lieberth, chair of the planning committee.
“It’s worth nothing that Akron’s had great parties in the past,” Lieberth said.
The centennial parade in 1925, for example, drew 150,000 people to Akron's streets - possibly the biggest celebration in the city’s history, he added.
“We plan to make some significant history of our own with this 2025 bicentennial year,” Greer said. “In addition to having opening and closing ceremonies, we have a number of bicentennial signatory events.”
Events in the works include a city-wide bike-a-thon, Greer said, with the goal of the path touching each of the city’s neighborhoods. He’s also planning a children’s biking event.
Officials are also planning a reprise of the Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart musical “Dearest Enemy,” which held its world premiere at the Akron Palace Theatre in 1925, Greer added. The performance will be held in June 2025 at the Akron-Summit County Public Library.
Greer hopes to have a bicentennial soap box derby race in partnership with the Akron Soapbox Derby, he added. The event is still in the early planning stages, but he said they are planning for the race to be an evening event.
In addition to more sporting and arts and culture festivities, there will be community forums and historical events, Lieberth added.
“One of the things that we've made a priority from the very beginning is to make certain that all 24 of Akron’s neighborhoods have an opportunity to do two things: one is to have a celebratory event of their own within the neighborhood that will be funded in part with the monies that we are raising citywide,” he said. “Secondly, a program of historic markers throughout every neighborhood.”
Greer is working on an initiative in each neighborhood to put markers of significant or well-known people that are from there or notable events that happened there.
The planning group is also looking to interview older residents who grew up in Akron and put together oral histories, Lieberth added.
