AKRON, Ohio — The city is asking for the community’s input on the future of a closed 33-acre section of the Akron Innerbelt.
An online survey will be available through Jan. 31 to enable residents to submit their ideas and answer a few questions, the city said in a release. In February, 10 participants’ names will be drawn to win $25 gift cards.
The future of the Innerbelt has been up for discussion for several years.
The highway was the site of a dinner for 500 in 2015 and the subject of a design charette at Kent State University’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design in 2017.
In 2018, it was temporarily an urban forest.
The events were designed to spur ideas about what could replace that section of highway that would best serve the community.
The majority of the events shared a common understanding that whatever the highway becomes, it must tie the West Hill and Summit Lake neighborhoods back in to the city.
That’s because a thriving Black neighborhood and business district were there first, with many families’ homes and small businesses wiped out when the highway was built, according to a report published in 1977 by Frank Kendrick, University of Akron.
The Innerbelt never achieved the objective planners envisioned in the early 1970s — to carry 100,000 vehicles per day from the suburbs to the city, helping grow Akron’s population.
The six-lane highway, which took years to complete, never averaged more than about 20,000 vehicles per day, the city said.
The current survey is the next step in the Reconnecting Our Community initiative the city launched in 2020.
The goal has been to decide the best use of the 33 acres, relying in large part on the wishes of the people, or their relatives, harmed by the Innerbelt, the city said.
“As we look ahead to what this area could become, we are taking every effort to engage Akron’s residents and especially those who may have been displaced by the Innerbelt’s construction,” said Mayor Dan Horrigan.
To lead Reconnecting Our Community, the city hired Liz Ogbu of Studio O. Ogbu is an urban designer specializing in community-centric planning and design.
Although the pandemic slowed progress, Ogbu has worked for the past two years with a 15-member Innerbelt advisory group, comprising those the highway displaced as well as community leaders and business owners.
Ogbu has helped lead a series of free, community events on the highway, from the Innerbelt Reunion to the Rubber City Jazz Fest.
“From in-person events, to pop-up educational stands at community gatherings, to this survey, we are looking to our community to weigh in on what they’d like to see in this space,” Horrigan said.
According to the city’s timeline, planners will use the input collected from the community to develop a plan that various contractors will temporarily activate between 2023 and 2025.
Depending on what works, permanent changes are expected to be implemented at the site in 2030.
To lean more about the history of the Innerbelt Highway, visit the Reconnecting Our Community website.
