Inside Akron’s 24 neighborhoods — residents tell us what they love, what’s needed

Neighbors who greet each other, walk their dogs, plan community events. Diverse and interesting architecture. Trees. Streets full of fairy gardens. A sledding spot so popular it’s known simply as “The Hill.” 

There’s plenty that Akron residents love about their neighborhoods and plenty that makes them unique. For some, it’s the people. For others, it’s the parks.

“People living outside, on the street, up and down the driveway — it’s nice,” said Jill Cabe, 55, who lives in West Hill. “Our porch is an extension of our living room.”

In the coming weeks, you’ll get to learn more about the pleasures of Akron’s 24 neighborhoods. Akron Documenters — everyday residents who chronicle a wide range of government meetings — took on an ambitious project: they fanned out across the city to find the small businesses, neighbors and green spaces that make Coventry Crossing, Coventry Crossing and High Hampton, High Hampton.

INSIDE AKRON: Akron Documenters are fanning out across the city’s 24 neighborhoods to elevate places, faces, voices and vibes — as shared by the people who live there. Expect a new profile every day through October.

Didn’t know those were Akron neighborhoods? Neither do some of the people who live there.

What defines an Akron neighborhood? The 2017 map, explained

In 2017, city leaders solidified a map that was first created in 2000 and defined — or redefined — Akron’s neighborhood boundaries. There are some that were well-known, such as Highland Square or Middlebury, Akron’s first neighborhood. There were others that were newly created, like Merriman Hills.

They renamed Lane-Wooster to Sherbondy Hill. They expanded Kenmore to absorb Rolling Acres,once the mall that gave that neighborhood its name closed. They pulled out Cabe’s West Hill neighborhood, giving it its own name.

“​​I realize that neighborhoods are in the eye of the beholder,” Jason Segedy, Akron’s former planning director, told Signal Akron’s Brittany Moseley in 2023. “Although the city took a stab at ‘Here’s where we think the neighborhoods are and what they’re called,’ we always looked at it as, people can be and should be free to have their own definitions.”

And they do.

Mary Manning, 64, grew up in east Akron, and didn’t think to call her neighborhood Goodyear Heights until the maps told her that was where she lived. She likes how quiet it is, and the trails at Goodyear Heights Metro Park. That’s where The Hill is — Manning said it’s one of the better ones for sledding in the city.

In Firestone Park, where Diana Munro has lived for 33 years, it’s Harvey Firestone’s influence that defines the neighborhood, as well as its walkability. He donated the property for two churches, he built a school and a stadium. Firestone wanted a neighborhood that was affordable for his workers, though it was originally deed restricted to white residents.

Now, 63-year-old Munro can listen to bands in the park shaped like the Firestone shield on Tuesday nights and enjoy her backyard swimming pool. She can walk to the library, the park, the community garden. The neighborhood, she said, has “so much pride.”

“It’s just like a quaint little community,” she added.

Akron neighborhood wish list: safety, services, community spaces

That’s not to say it — or any Akron neighborhood — is perfect. Munro said people will sometimes ransack cars, while Manning lamented Goodyear’s shrinking footprint. Cabe, in West Hill, said she hates that some homes have been vacant for the 20 years she’s lived there. Buildings have been allowed to deteriorate, she said, and there are problems with drug abuse that spills into the neighborhood.

Kelly Stubblefield, who lives in a Chapel Hill apartment, said she was sorry to see the mall that was that neighborhood’s namesake close. While she likes living next to a grocery store, she said there’s not a lot of neighborliness to her neighborhood.

“There’s no sense of community,” she said. “It could be much better. It should be better than it is.”

Megan Delong-Borick moved to Middlebury because she craved that sense of community. Her parents didn’t really talk to their neighbors and she never felt connected to the neighborhood she grew up in, she said. So when she bought her own home, she wanted a different experience.

“People just care and they care about each other and they want better,” said Delong-Borick, 28. “That’s something really near and dear to me about Middlebury.”

She described the neighborhood as one that’s full of great nonprofits, an area where anything is possible. There are hospitals and grocery stores and green spaces and the “full gamut of the human experience.”

Anthony Rhodes, who also lives in Middlebury, has a different perspective. While Rhodes, 65, enjoys the history — such as the Middlebury Millstone Monument and the Little Cuyahoga River — he sees an area with few places to buy food and too many rundown houses. He had hoped an idea to build tiny homes would come to fruition.

“I’d like to see the neighborhood do better,” Rhodes said, “and I’d like to see it supported better by the city and mayor.”

Akron community support: North Hill Nepali shops, First Fridays in Kenmore, West Hill porch culture

Support can come from the community, too. The larger Nepali community brought Bikash Ghalley, 38, to North Hill from Fort Worth, Texas in 2022. He later opened Bikash Fancy Clothing, which he said is part of a healthy network of nearby businesses that includes Nepali Kitchen and South Asian grocery stores.

Immigration has helped grow North Hill, Ghalley said, and neighbors are eager to help newcomers adjust to life in Akron.

“Everybody, they help each other,” he said. “Over here, if they come, they get help.”

The help she’s received is also what endeared Kendra Hood, 49, to Kenmore. She sung the praises of her landlord, who she said was flexible when she missed work because of surgeries and ended up on unemployment. 

Outside of her apartment, Hood said she likes the First Friday events on Kenmore Boulevard, which include vendors, facepainting and balloons — an enjoyable family activity.

Those sort of events are another way to make people feel welcome in their communities. That’s what Tait Galbraith, 50, appreciates about West Hill.

In his old neighborhood, Galbraith said people didn’t really talk to each other. 

But he’s quickly found friends through the West Hill Neighborhood Organization, which hosts events. Like Cabe, he lauded the community’s porch culture. He said he’s more likely to go outside because other people are there, too.

The proximity to downtown, to Highland Square, to the restaurant Good Company — Cabe said it can’t be beat. Plus, there are partners such as the Church of Our Saviour, which provides a clothing bank and free meals. She called the neighborhood funky and vibrant. “Very hipster,” Galbraith said.

In West Akron, where Ben Gifford has lived since 2020, the neighborhood is quieter, but the outdoors is still a major draw. Gifford, 38, likes to learn the names of dogs, and sometimes people, who walk up and down his street. The Forest Lodge Community Center is nearby, as is Schneider Park. And he swears Gino’s Pizza on Copley Road is some of the best in Akron.

It’s the feel of the neighborhood that sets it apart. Great trees, nice houses. Gifford likes to warm his socks on the banging radiator.

“They don’t build them like this anymore,” he said of his 1929 home.

Marbles, fairy gardens and Akron’s city of neighborhoods

The City of Akron didn’t want to have “100 really small neighborhoods,” said Segedy, the former planning director, but Brittany Cogdeill’s Merriman Hills neighborhood feels small to her — a pocket neighborhood, she called it, a play on the tucked-away pocket parks that feel like a surprise burst of green.

Canyon Trail Park is her pocket park, and a park collective plans events that have helped build her sense of community. Cogdeill, 35, also said she loves the art scattered throughout Merriman Hills. There’s the Marble Man — she called him a neighborhood legend — who leaves marbles in his gravel driveway for kids to take home. There are also so many fairy gardens that she and her daughter follow a fairy garden walking route of their own making.

“If you get in and find a home, you stay,” Cogdeill said of her neighbors. “It’s a hidden little gem. I never want to leave.”

Ronald Winters, similarly, has no plans to move. The 33-year-old North Hill resident is from the area and said he loves the diversity, the fact that everyone knows everyone else and the way the neighborhood just feels like home.

“I don’t pretty much plan on being nowhere else,” he said. “It’s a quiet, safe space. We respect each other.”

It’s too soon for Cyprus Simmons, who moved to Sherbondy Hill five months ago, to know if he’ll stick around forever. But for now, the 32-year-old Cleveland Clinic Akron General phlebotomist can walk to work and to Perkins Park, where he was playing basketball Friday evening.

He’d like to see a bigger playground, perhaps with a splashpad, but said for now, the community is giving him what he needs.

From Kenmore to Chapel Hill, Ellet to Northwest, Coventry Crossing to High Hampton: Across Akron, the identities people form in relation to their communities are tied to the places they live. After all, what is a city but a series of neighborhoods?

“What I’ve found over the years, and I think this is true of almost every city that’s large enough to have neighborhoods, is it’s something I think people are inherently interested in,” Segedy said. “Even a city the size of Akron is really as much a collection of smaller places as it is a larger whole.”

Explore Akron’s neighborhoods