The city of Akron is set to bring pedestrian improvements, mobile grocery stores and housing to its decommissioned Innerbelt, according to a new master plan announced Thursday.
The plan, developed by urban planning firm Sasaki, aims to better connect Akron's East and West Sides, while correcting historic mistakes that displaced thousands of Black residents to acquire property for the Innerbelt prior to its construction in the 1970s.
"It's not just about putting back physically the way it was, but rather looking at economy, housing, open space, culture, history," said Siqi Zhu, associate principal with Sasaki, "try to repair all of these different aspects and not just the physical sort of highway and roads."
Sasaki conducted public engagement sessions over the last year to better identify residents' priorities for the space, Zhu said. Doing so allowed the team to identify five key metrics for the master plan: neighborhood-based investments, improving east-to-west corridors, connecting historically disenfranchised neighborhoods to social, health and economic resources, activating underutilized land and using land beneath the Innerbelt.
"The authentic community engagement and intentional process, that really is grassroots, that really is bottom up, is critical ... to getting it right, to not redoing the sins of the past," Mayor Shammas Malik said. "But at the same time, we all know we have been talking about this Innerbelt for a long time, and so, what's exciting about tonight is that we are ready for action."
Angela Brown, who lives in Akron's Kenmore neighborhood, attended several of the public engagement sessions for the Innerbelt project. Seeing the master plan come together restores some of the faith she lost in the city's promise to revitalize the space, she said.
"I was skeptical, so it just makes me happy and excited that they are actually listening to our voices and actually have a plan in place to bring about change in this neighborhood," Brown said. "I grew up in these neighborhoods and had family in these neighborhoods."
Lifelong Akron resident Stanley Taylor lives near the Innerbelt on Rhodes Avenue. The master plan is a step in the right direction, Taylor said, but he hopes to also see a commitment to reestablishing schools in the immediate area.
"If they're going to bring families back, they need to have a school here so that the kids aren't traveling 30 minutes to school," he said. "They're able to walk to their schools, and then that gives them that sense of community."
Akron resident Roberta Rogers grew up in the area where the Innerbelt stands today, and said she remembers the stores, post offices and tight-knit community of her former neighborhood.
The strategies outlined in the master plan are a satisfactory way to make up for what the community lost 60 years ago, Rogers said.
"There's no way they could pay the people for being displaced or figure out ... who lived where and how much they would be owed for that," she said, "but I do like the fact that now there's gonna be retail spaces, there's gonna be places for the children to play, there's gonna be housing, so I feel that this will try to bring Akron back together again."
The city was set to receive a $10 million federal grant in January to support the redevelopment, but those funds have since been rolled back.
The master plan was intentionally designed to outline short-term projects that can be accomplished in five years or less, Zhu said, giving the city time to find funding for large scale projects.
"There are much larger, longer-term projects, and we put those in the master plan with the hope that these smaller near-term things can build momentum and economic momentum," he said. "It's also a way for us to build in some room for things to improve once again ... at the federal level for these larger investments."
