Seventh-grader Emanuel Romero watched hand-drawn concepts he helped to create transform into digital renderings that reimagined a vacant swath of grass beside Jennings Community Learning Center, located in Akron’s North Hill.
He was one of several middle school students who gathered last week at his school to celebrate as Akron Public Schools and Trust for Public Land unveiled plans to construct a community schoolyard. The $300,000 project features:
- A soccer pitch and bleachers in the center with landscaping surrounding it
- A walking trail connected to a paved courtyard with a small pavilion
- Tables where students can gather before and after school
- A nearby mural wall
“It’s honestly great knowing that what I’m doing, what my team is doing, is going to have an impact,” said Emanuel, 13.
The design for the vacant lot — dubbed “The Bowl” due to its grading compared to the nearby street — was conceptualized through input from community members and seventh graders from Jennings CLC, who embraced the opportunity to create something that will outlast their time at the middle school.
Trust for Public Land chose the North Hill school for its second project in Ohio as part of the nonprofit’s continued effort to increase public park access in high-need communities. According to the organization’s research, more than 28 million children in the U.S. do not have a park within a 10-minute walk of their home. Turning schoolyards into community spaces can change that.
At the unveiling, Jennings CLC Principal Lashawna Grimes looked at her students and staff, announcing “this was done for us and by us.”
The space will be open to the public outside school hours. Trust for Public Land hopes to break ground next year, with a completion date of December 2027.
North Hill students look to leave a legacy
While Trust for Public Land’s projects typically trade asphalt and blacktop for green grass and brightly colored playground equipment, the space at Jennings CLC is already an empty field — the site of the old Jennings School. Built in 1915, the building was razed when Jennings CLC was built in 2006.
Since then, it has become an unofficial soccer pitch and cut-through to Patterson Park Community Center.
Since arriving at Jennings CLC, Dakoda Gamble had been thinking about what “The Bowl” could be. She wanted it transformed into something with “personality.”
Mission accomplished.
“It was a really great experience,” Dakoda, 13, said. “The part that I’m [excited] for is being able to come back one day and be like ‘I designed this.’”
“They put their whole heart and their whole soul into this project,” said Grimes, the school’s principal. “This space is going to be a legacy for our school, our team, our students – it’s going to be a permanent reminder of our dedication, our passion and our love for our community.”
Public access is ‘environmental justice at work’
Carla Chapman, APS’ chief of community relations and strategic engagement, sees the proposed transformation as “environmental justice at work.”
“It spoke to my passion, it spoke to work that I do to transform spaces that could become assets in a community, that could help folks who live around it and near it access green, healthy spaces like never before,” Chapman said at the plan’s May 27 unveiling.
Across the country, Trust for Public Land ranks urban communities’ poverty and education levels, health, heat index and other factors to help determine where to focus its future efforts to create equitable access to nature.
In 2017, the U.S. Department of Agriculture highlighted links between green space access in urban areas and reductions in stress and improved health outcomes for residents.
Also: Similar spaces literally cool neighborhoods, lowering average temperatures driven up by concentrations of pavement, buildings and highways that trap heat.
Schoolyard design takes cues from ‘The Bowl’s’ current use
To get here, Tait Ferguson, parks program assistant at Trust for Public Land, said groups of students surveyed schoolmates and nearby residents.
The teenagers used that data to determine what amenities the park needed — pitching everything from outdoor classroom space and swing sets to monkey bars and an electronic sign with information about upcoming school programs.
Trust for Public Land contracted a landscape architect to distill student pitches into a feasible design.
“We wanted to make it a design that really responded to what the community is already using in this space,” Ferguson said.
That meant soccer. On the day the nonprofit announced the design, groups of kids were taking practice shots at the two goals set up on the field.
The $300,000 design includes support from the Cleveland Soccer Group Foundation, the foundation arm affiliated with Cleveland’s new pro soccer teams Forest City Cleveland and Cleveland Astra, which will play their first games in 2027 and 2028, respectively.
Trust for Public Land has secured $75,000 and is currently fundraising, Ferguson said.
Ohio pilot started in Cuyahoga County
East Cleveland City Schools boasts Trust for Public Land’s first community schoolyard in the state.
In 2023, the group selected Caledonia Elementary for the pilot, transforming an asphalt schoolyard into a greenspace with play areas, outdoor classroom space, shade trees and landscaping to reduce heat and give the surrounding community a place to gather.
The schoolyard opened in October 2025, serving not only Caledonia Elementary’s 250 students but also the 2,700 neighbors nearby. Like the project at Jennings CLC, students at Caledonia Elementary gave input on what they wanted to see in the space.
Beyond its schoolyard projects, the Trust for Public Land has invested in the Cleveland area since 1974, with trails linking downtown Cleveland to Lake Erie, partnerships to save waterfront land at Rivergate Park and an expansion of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park.
