After more than a year of interviews, workshops and community discussions, the City of Akron has released a master plan that aims to repair the harm caused by the construction of the Innerbelt and the destruction of the neighborhood in its path.
The plan, developed by Sasaki, a Boston-based planning and engineering firm, acknowledges that it will take decades — and tens of millions of dollars — to implement the litany of proposals that extend far beyond the currently decommissioned portion of the highway.
In fact, aside from planting tufted grasses and other greenery to help repair the soil and carving a walkway on the Innerbelt from the existing surface, the plan mostly leaves the milelong roadway alone in favor of recommending increased housing, new road connections and other improvements that can help enliven the area and connect it to downtown.
The city provided an early copy of the master plan for review before it was released Monday, but it didn’t make anyone available to talk about it. Mayor Shammas Malik, in a letter introducing the document, said it is a call to action.
“I believe the resulting Innerbelt Master Plan is an opportunity for Akron,” Malik wrote. “It is an opportunity for economic growth in a key corridor of our city. It’s an opportunity to bridge divides created by an act of generational inequity. It’s an opportunity for the healing of deep wounds. Out of immense pain can come incredible empowerment and I look at this plan as a guidebook for how that can happen in our community.”
The city has already allocated $500,000 in its capital budget to begin short-term projects, including beautifying the decommissioned portion of the Innerbelt, resurfacing Vernon Odom Boulevard, updating the zoning code for neighborhoods around the Innerbelt to encourage walkable development and facilitating the development of infill housing.
Understand the history: Read more stories that show how the discussion around the Akron Innerbelt has evolved and what led to this moment.
A $10 million U.S. Department of Transportation grant the city announced last January is still in flux after the Reconnecting Communities grants were paused for further review. In a statement, Malik said the funding was “critical to turning this community vision into real, tangible change.”
“We will continue to strongly advocate for these resources so we can deliver on what our residents helped design including reconnecting neighborhoods, creating new opportunities, and building a more vibrant Akron,” he said.
What are the plan’s focus areas?
The master plan’s proposals fall into five categories:
- Invest in the neighborhoods.
- Strengthen east-west corridors.
- Connect open spaces.
- Activate Innerbelt-adjacent assets.
- Unlock land under the Innerbelt.
The proposed neighborhood investment could include the construction of mixed-income housing on vacant or underused lots, including on Oak Park Drive and in Sherbondy Hill. It could mean money for rehabilitating existing homes in the areas around the Innerbelt. It could include the revitalization of Vernon Odom Boulevard, better pedestrian safety and increased access to food and child care.
Paired with those initiatives are proposals like contributing public land for new home construction to increase affordability, improving support for local housing developers and tax support for low-income homeowners. Malik previously expressed support for the creation of a community land trust, which shares the ownership of land, reducing prices.
East-west connections might mean adding pedestrian and bike lanes, converting some one-way streets (such as Exchange and Cedar) to two-way streets or improving transit. Proposals also include closing the Mill Street bridge to vehicles and supporting commercial corridors on Exchange Street and Vernon Odom Boulevard. Doing so would increase access to jobs, services and other resources, according to the plan.
Proposals to connect open spaces include bicycle and pedestrian improvements, better wayfinding signs, new public spaces and public art that celebrates Black culture and Akron’s history — potentially on the Innerbelt itself as it’s remade before long-term plans can come to fruition. Those proposals include improvements to the historic Glendale Steps.
The result, the report said, would be to create more opportunities for health and wellness, social connection and equitable economic development.
Developing publicly owned land for affordable housing, jobs and cultural uses are among the proposals that could activate nearby property — a city-owned parking lot at 50 S. Main St., or parking lots at 10 N. Main St., the headquarters of Akron Public Schools. The plan also calls for Akron to encourage and incentivize private development that’s aligned with community goals. And it supports the creation of structures that can help encourage reinvestment when property values in the area rise.
Lastly, the proposal calls for the city to take control of the rest of the Innerbelt, a long-term undertaking that could help improve connectivity but requires the agreement of other government entities. The plan says the city could unlock land by demolishing unnecessary highway infrastructure and creating new road connections.
How does the Innerbelt plan help heal Akron?
Last June, Akron Economic Development Director Suzie Graham Moore likened the Innerbelt to a scar that needed to be healed. She said then that it made more sense for Akron to begin making improvements at the edge of the wound — the neighborhoods that surround the Innerbelt — than to dive into its center.
“The Innerbelt harm is not just the space the roadway takes,” she said at the time. “It reaches out to the east and west.”
Healing that harm, and doing so broadly, are key focuses of Sasaki’s proposal.
If fully realized, the plan would result in more than 4,500 new homes, additional neighborhood businesses, seven miles of new roads and new street and park connections. It would also mean dozens of new policies and programs to aid those efforts and prioritize repairing what was broken when the Innerbelt was built.
The plan asks for actions to “begin to address the physical, social, economic, and psychological losses of the past” and seeks to honor and learn from what was lost, the report says. It adds that the tools that were used to divide the community — notably, public investment, infrastructure and zoning — “must now be redirected toward healing, reconnection, and shared prosperity.”
“In this vision, the Innerbelt is no longer a void between neighborhoods but a place for reconnection, a place where new forms of movement, memory, and meaning can emerge,” the plan says. “Strengthening links between Sherbondy Hill, West Hill, and Downtown is about more than mobility. It is about creating a renewed sense of place and a shared sense of possibility for a more just, connected, and vibrant future in the entire Innerbelt area. This plan turns the question from what was lost to what can now be built together.”
The goal, it says, is to create equitable development and acknowledge that the effect of destroying a community for a highway was more than physical. To this day, the report says, there is disinvestment and high amounts of need in the areas the master plan encompasses.
The plan notes that Akron has limited funding and other resources. So while work may begin soon on some of the proposed components, major uncertainties remain, and it will take decades for large-scale transformations to occur.
Plan will take decades, cost millions
Over more than 30 years, the plan states, the goal is to “fully reconnect” the Innerbelt with its surroundings.
“Given the magnitude of this work, the vision will not happen overnight, but rather requires a phased, incremental roadmap,” the master plan says.
To that end, projects proposed over the next five years are intended to add housing, improve the conditions of existing homes and increase access to fresh food. They’ll include pop-up businesses and tools to support more permanent economic improvements, traffic calming, planting, public art and zoning changes that will help spur more development in the future.
Over the longer term, the master plan presents a vision of neighborhoods that are reintegrated into downtown, that are more interesting and easier to traverse and that revitalize communities that have been largely ignored.
Those outcomes, the report says, require the city to act differently than it has in the past.
“Akron’s pattern of reactive decisions has sometimes favored short-term wins over long-term goals,” the report says.
It goes on to say that the transformation “is achieved through a series of incremental steps that build upon each other,” like removing infrastructure, improving streets or redeveloping vacant sites.
A supplement to the nearly 200-page report estimates costs for just some of the project — removing the Innerbelt and reconstructing Dart and Rand avenues — at between $51.6 million and $69.2 million. Other estimates include up to $25.9 million to convert Cedar and Exchange streets to two-way, $8 million to improve Market Street with a landscaped median, and $6.1 million for bike and pedestrian improvements on Vernon Odom Boulevard.
On the lower end, short-term improvements to Vernon Odom Boulevard could run the city $300,000 or less. Improving the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Main Street intersection could cost up to $250,000 but make the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail and the Hotel Mathews monument more accessible.
Residents have said they want a vibrant community
In the end, the report said, the master plan “envisions a future where the physical repair and reconnection of the Innerbelt area is paired with the restoration of community power and investment in the most heavily impacted neighborhoods.” It does that through social impact tools that “collectively serve to advance the community’s goals for repair.”
Time and again, residents with connections to the area have said they want projects that help Akron’s Black community, and those who were displaced, in a positive way.
Last October, Roberta Rogers, who lives in West Akron and who moved away from the neighborhood the Innerbelt destroyed when she was a teenager, said she thought the project could be “an opportunity to bring people back home.”
And Stanley Taylor, who grew up in the area and bought a home on Rhodes Avenue in 2024, said he was optimistic the city’s efforts would again result in a vibrant community.
“These are things they could really do,” he said of the proposals at the time. “I think it’s wonderful.”
From here, the master plan will be presented to the city’s planning commission in April, then to City Council for adoption. Malik, in his statement, said the conclusion of the planning phase “marks an important step forward for our city.”
Residents, throughout the process, were eager to see what would come of it.
“I just want to be here to see the first five to 15 years,” Beverly Bray said in the fall. “I want to see how it looks.”
To see the full master plan, go here.