The City of Akron has rejected a proposal to turn the vacant Firestone Plant #1 building into its new police headquarters, the developer who proposed the project said Wednesday.
Jim Loveman, a partner with Amerimar Realty Co., said he had a meeting with city officials where they told him his proposal to redevelop the property, then lease it back to Akron, was a nonstarter.
“They made it pretty clear that they are not moving forward” with his plan, Loveman said.
Amerimar, under the name Akron Phoenix Development Co., developed an old Firestone warehouse next to the 115-year-old plant into the Russell M. Pry Building on South Main Street. It now houses Summit County government operations.
In his proposal to the city, Loveman said he hoped the company’s “track record of negotiating a mutually beneficial lease with Summit County at the Russell M. Pry Building can serve as a template for the proposed negotiation with the Akron Police Department.”
But Wednesday, he said officials told him the proposal — which suggested the city forgo a required $5 million purchase price, to be returned upon successful completion of the project — was not responsive to its request for proposals.
In addition to asking that the city reduce or eliminate that price, Loveman said city officials told him they would not contemplate a lease agreement and that the Firestone plant is outside the radius where they want the police headquarters to be located.
Mayor Shammas Malik, at an Oct. 9 Ward 1 meeting at the Highland Square Library, said the city was considering three options for the police headquarters: Its current location at the aging Harold K. Stubbs Justice Center building downtown, the former Wonder Bread facility at 178 Forge St. on the University of Akron campus, where they would build new, or at the building at 80 W. Bowery St. owned by Akron Children’s near Lock 3, which the city could retrofit. The Firestone building was not on a long list of proposed options.
A spokesperson for the city declined to comment Wednesday afternoon.
‘There are other buildings at stake’
Akron City Council Member Donnie Kammer, who represents Ward 7 where the building is located, said previously he supported the plan. Wednesday, he said he didn’t think the city was giving enough attention to historic buildings in Akron.
“How I take it is the mayor just wants to erase history and things that are connected to Firestone,” Kammer said, referencing the city’s plan to change the rubber worker logo.
Rejecting the proposal, which would save the front part of the building, including its clock tower, has the potential to harm the redevelopment opportunities for other Firestone Park buildings, said Dana Noel, the advocacy chair of Progress Through Preservation.
Noel said Firestone Elementary School has the potential to be turned into housing and other buildings in the area could be redeveloped as well. But to treat the potential projects as disconnected runs the risk of hurting them all.
“I don’t think they’re being fair to the community,” Noel said. “There are other buildings at stake.”
The city was originally supposed to demolish the back sections of Plant #1 and preserve the front but later said it would be too expensive to save that part of the building. Members of the city’s Urban Design and Historic Preservation Commission rejected a request to allow the full demolition.
The proposal then went before City Council, which approved demolition with the caveat that the city first try to save the building.
The city, which has money available to demolish the entire property, put a short timeline on proposals after pushback from City Council members and others about the planning department’s request to tear the whole thing down.
Noel questioned the city’s math about how much it would cost to save the front of the building, saying he thought officials presented their budget to “justify demolition.” He also said he thought the 30-day timeframe for developers to pose ideas to save the building was too short, and he questioned what steps the city took to market the Firestone plant nationally to potential developers.
“Jim Loveman was such a logical choice,” Noel said. “Half the battle is finding a qualified developer.”
A tool in the economic development toolbelt
Loveman said Planning Director Kyle Julien, Economic Development Director Suzie Graham Moore and Deputy Economic Development Director Sean Vollman did not tell him there were any physical reasons why the building wouldn’t work for police. Instead, he said, they talked about its location and the lease structure.
“There wasn’t really a whole lot of sleeves being rolled up,” he said.
The 30-day window the city gave wasn’t long enough to give anyone else a chance to propose another development option, Loveman said — especially since the building will be far smaller than it was when the city looked for users for the past decade of its ownership.
Loveman said Amerimar had originally planned to develop Plant #1 as a hub for fracking, but found that the industry wasn’t creating permanent jobs, as he had hoped. He had a contract to purchase the building, but it lapsed in 2015.
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Now, with the smaller square footage, the tax credits that would be available to help cover the cost could support development. But the city has a state grant to pay for its demolition that it’s on a deadline to use.
“We don’t own the building, but we’re merchants of good ideas, I think,” Loveman said. “If they leave it standing, it’s a tool in the economic development toolbelt. There could be a future there under different fiscal situations.”