Every summer, Brent Wesley invites the community to the Highland Square neighborhood for Akron Honey Market Day.
The annual event is equal parts neighborhood block party, vendor fair and foodie experience. (This year’s honey-centric collabs included honey cornmeal cookies from Baked AF and the Akron Honey Dog from FrankieLynn Hot Dogs.)
At the 12th annual Akron Honey Market Day on June 29, visitors filled the small stretch of Jefferson Avenue near West Exchange Street where the company’s production facility sits. The temperature hovered in the high 80s, but no one seemed too bothered by it. (Chilled bottles of Akron Honey’s cold brew tea helped.) Everyone was busy sampling food, enjoying the music and perusing the vendor stalls.
The yearly market has come a long way since it started, Wesley — who goes by Wes — said.
“The first time we did market day, I opened the gates of the apiary and sold right in the front of the gate,” he recalled. Akron Honey’s apiary — where the bee hives are kept — sits in a vacant lot on Jefferson behind the production facility.
Wesley plans to keep the spirit of Akron Honey Market Day going all year long by turning a vacant lot into a space for public markets.
The lot sits next to Akron Honey’s production facility at 1030 Jefferson Ave. It’s the former site of a hair salon that burned down in 2023. Wesley purchased the land in December 2024. He was in talks to purchase the rest of the building complex that remained post-fire — formerly home to All Paths Merge and LeeAngelo’s — but the deal fell through.
Now, Wesley is focused on activating the newest space on Akron Honey’s roster. He’s got big ideas for the area. He’s dubbed it the Yellow Brick Road District because of Jefferson Avenue’s honey-hued street. Up first: a new mural commissioned by creative agency Art x Love.
The project is personal for Wesley. He not only has a business in the area but he and his family also lives a couple blocks away. Public markets are just the first step. He envisions a neighborhood that is walkable and welcoming to all — whether they live in the area or are just visiting.
Signal Akron spoke to Wesley about what he has in store. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
What can people expect in the Yellow Brick Road District?
Vendor markets, foodie markets, farmers markets. We’re really leaning in and getting creative. So what it’s going to look like from now to the end of the year, we want to do about six markets. One of the types of markets we’ve been talking about is a night market. The one thing that we’re planning for is a pop-up food hall. It’s a little bit like the recipe we use for our annual market day where we invite some of the best food brands and we do a market. But the difference is, we’re gonna lean into how small mobile food operations can be, so food carts, small push carts.
When do you think you’ll hold the next market?
As soon as the mural gets done, that’s our start. But I would say, probably safely, two months from now will be the first actual market.
How are you planning to deal with parking in that area, and making sure there’s enough for visitors and residents?
That’s one of the things that has been, if you talk to people, it’s been problematic. I think that adds to the charm, as weird as it sounds. We’ll go to places like Ohio City or Tremont. You park a couple blocks away from where you need to go, and it’s no problem. I remember I went to New York City. Greenwich Village, it’s like the most charming little neighborhood, and you just can’t expect to park right in front of where you’re going. I think it’s going to be an education thing. We have to position it in their mind that a normal part of Yellow Brick Road District is parking around the corner or parking on another street.
How do you make Yellow Brick Road District a place that people from outside the neighborhood want to visit but also make it a place that serves the people who live in the area?
I think a phrase that captures what you just said that I’ve been hearing more recently is placekeeping. In the design of Yellow Brick Road District, we looked at the neighborhood. We didn’t look at other neighborhoods and say, ‘Oh, let’s make our neighborhood like that.’ No, we looked at our neighborhood and identified that, yo, this is cozy, romantic and charming without a doubt. But how we enhance it with the foodie culture and everything, we had to listen so closely to the heartbeat of the community. That’s one of our superpowers.
Being able to be on the block as much as we have been, we’ve been blessed to be able to see how folks interact with the block. I think that that’s super duper key in how we move forward, especially with regards to not being exclusive. One of the pieces of design is addressing West Exchange and its red line history, whether they want to recognize it or not. I literally have seen that corridor be a red line and keep certain people out, keep Black folks on the other side. We’re very intentional and specific with avoiding that and fixing for that. A part of that is making West Exchange way more walkable. We live on the other side of that red line. It’s dangerous to take your kids over there [because of the traffic patterns]. That’s a big deterrent for that neighborhood to experience that corridor.
What else should people know about your plans for this area?
I’m a really good listener. I listen endlessly, and I respond to that. This plan is really just a reaction to what I’ve seen in the community, what I’ve experienced in the community firsthand for quite some time. I don’t want it to be like, ‘Oh, this is Wesley’s plan,’ because it really is not. Y’all just see me at the front. I’m really just a servant here. I’m here to serve. That’s my thing.