Esther Thomas’ parents were part of the Great Migration of African Americans who moved north in the 20th century — in their case, from Birmingham, Alabama, to Akron.
One of their homes was on Bell Street, which was split by the creation of the Akron Innerbelt. Construction of the urban renewal project began in 1970 and displaced more than 1,000 homes and businesses, the majority of them Black-owned.
After Thomas began her current role in January 2024 as the city of Akron’s director of diversity, equity and inclusion, she said she found the city and its partners’ project of reimagining of the Innerbelt corridor to be “one of the most dearest things that I’ve worked on.”
Thomas shared at the June 26 Akron Roundtable event, “Reimagine Akron, After the Innerbelt” how the ongoing project — which will involve creating new uses for a roughly 30-acre decommissioned portion of the freeway and surrounding areas — is taking shape.
Liz Ogbu, a designer and social justice activist, moderated the discussion at the John S. Knight Center with Thomas; Siqi Zhu, director of planning and urban technology, associate principal and planner at Sasaki; and Mordecai Cargill, co-founder and creative director of ThirdSpace Action Lab.
Innerbelt area redevelopment to be a ‘multi-decade endeavor’
Later in the summer or in the fall of 2025, the project team — including the city, Sasaki, ThirdSpace and other partners — will release a picture of what the area could physically look like in 30 years, Zhu said.
But that’s just one part of what Zhu called a “multi-decade endeavor.”
“So, besides the physical manifestation in the future, we’re also looking at policy and economic tools that advance repair in the broader sense of social and economic repair,” Zhu said.
The team previously announced an initiative to look at alternatives for the southwest portion of the Innerbelt owned by the Ohio Department of Transportation. Akron Planning Director Kyle Julien said city officials talked with ODOT representatives in summer 2024 about the possibility of reconfiguring that stretch somehow but that the parties have not formally agreed on anything.
Project team compiling options based on community feedback
Cargill said it’s important for the project team to collaborate with the community by offering “a menu of engagement tactics, not a recipe.”
“Based off of the types of questions that we need to get answered, the types of problems that we’re attempting to collaborate around, it may require us to fashion some new approaches, research some alternatives,” Cargill said.
Carla Chapman, chief of community relations and strategic engagement at Akron Public Schools, grew up across the street from the now-demolished Samuel A. Lane School in Akron’s Lane-Wooster neighborhood (now Sherbondy Hill) west of the Innerbelt.
“It is painful in many ways to revisit this for me,” Chapman said at the June 26 event.
Chapman said she is both “hopeful and questioning” about the ongoing project, called “Reimagine the Innerbelt, Together.”
It’s important, she said, for people in the area to be part of the conversation.
While Chapman has since moved to another part of Akron, she said she’d welcome a “vibrant business corridor” in the area, with grocery stores, pharmacies, health centers and a gas station. Sherbondy Hill is both a food desert and a pharmacy desert.
Project’s success will require awareness of the area’s past
The Rev. Gregory Harrison, senior pastor of Antioch Baptist Church and an Akron Public Schools board member, also grew up in the Lane-Wooster neighborhood, where Antioch Baptist Church is located, and attended the June 26 panel. He made a comparison of homes and businesses being razed to make way for the Innerbelt and a theoretical tearing down of Highland Square to put in a highway.
“Restore it,” he said of the once-vibrant neighborhood that existed before the freeway led to its destruction.
In addition to regular destinations such as grocery options and a popular custard stand in the area — known as “Little Harlem” — Ogbu said it welcomed touring jazz greats such as Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington and Count Basie.
Thomas said she feels that the greatest challenge with the project is “keeping the idea that Akron is a great destination, the idea that we can reconnect our community, the idea that what was lost can be remembered and built upon.”
“Keeping that alive and going for 20 to 30 years, being inclusive of the past, remembering that in the present and to honor that in the future — that’s a huge challenge,” she said. “And that huge challenge is actually my greatest hope that we as a community are able to do that.”
Patrick Williams covers growth and development for the Akron Beacon Journal. He can be reached by email at pwilliams@gannett.com or on X @pwilliamsOH. Sign up for the Beacon Journal’s business and consumer newsletter, “What’s The Deal?”
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: ‘Social and economic repair’:
Akron official, partners on the Akron Innerbelt reimagining
Reporting by Patrick Williams, Akron Beacon Journal / Akron Beacon Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
