Akron officials have no firm plans for Rolling Acres Mall, now that the city owns the former shopping center.
The mall has been boarded up and largely abandoned since 2011, and repeated attempts to sell the property through Sherriff’s sales– including one last attempt a week ago -- have failed. Now, the deed has been transferred to the city and Mayor Dan Horrigan says they’re evaluating the 40-year-old property.
“The first step is to get it safe and secure, and to prevent people from going in. The easiest way to do that is: it’s going to be demolished at some particular point unless -- there’s probably very little chance that it’s going to be able to be saved. It’s just been deteriorating for years. So we’re going through that process now: the environmentals, what it looks like up there, then the structure of securing it and then cleaning it up.”
Horrigan adds that the city owns only the mall core itself. What used to be the five anchor stores are currently under separate ownership and are in use as light industrial space. Any plans for the mall would not include those five spaces.
