The Innerbelt Master Plan, a proposal intended to shepherd development near the decommissioned highway in order to repair harm enacted by its construction, is moving closer to adoption.
The plan, which lays out decades worth of projects to rebuild the area around the mile-long stretch of road and beyond, received the green light Friday from Akron’s planning commission. It will now move to City Council to be adopted.
The master plan calls for new housing, increased road and pedestrian connections and more equitable economic development in the area. Its priorities fall into five categories:
- Invest in the neighborhoods.
- Strengthen east-west corridors.
- Connect open spaces.
- Activate Innerbelt-adjacent assets.
- Unlock land under the Innerbelt.
“We know that this takes time, but each little move helps unlock a bigger step in the future,” said Dylan Garritano, a city planner who presented the plan.
He said making the area more walkable, commemorating residents’ memories of the once-vibrant Black community and finding mechanisms to help fund work on the project are among the city’s priorities.
Already, there are short-term plans to remove pavement and to landscape the abandoned stretch of road, update the zoning code in areas around the Innerbelt to encourage walkable development and resurface Vernon Odom Boulevard. Garritano said the city is particularly interested in focusing on the transitional areas between neighborhoods and Akron’s downtown, to ensure they are gradual.
Akron Public Schools has concerns about development of its downtown parking lot
The master plan was met with unanimous approval by planning commission members, but an Akron Public Schools administrator voiced some concerns.
Debra Foulk, the executive director of business affairs for APS, told school board members Monday that an image showing a proposed development in the parking lot of 10 N. Main St., the Akron Board of Education’s headquarters, was “part of the redevelopment of the downtown area.” The proposed redevelopment around the area would impact the parking lot on the property, she said.
“As proposed in this particular picture, it appears that that parking lot would not exist,” she said. “We truly do support, and need, the 490-plus parking spaces that are located here for a variety of reasons.”
Foulk told planning commission members Friday that the parking lot had been used as an emergency staging area and for school buses taking people to the headquarters building. Developing it, she said, could affect the district’s disaster recovery plan. She told the planning commission it was possible they didn’t know how much the district relied on the parking lot.
“This is our home and this is a very important place for us,” she said.
Later, in an interview, Foulk said she wanted planners to know how the space earmarked on the map for housing was already used.
Kyle Julien, Akron’s planning director, told the commission that he appreciated Foulk’s concerns and understood that APS controlled the property. Still, he said, he hoped downtown could transition away from parking lots and toward parking structures in the future.
“This is a vision,” he said. “It’s not to say this building is going on this spot.”
Nonetheless, Julien said, the plan’s goal is to line Market and Main streets with more active uses that contribute to the tax base. One of the plan’s intentions, he said, is to reestablish something that resembled the once-vibrant Howard Street downtown.
“The overall impulse here is to say there’s a tremendous amount of land in that area that’s underutilized,” Julien said.
Later, in an interview, he said developing parking lots would help to reestablish Akron’s urban fabric.
“Downtown should have a more intense land-use pattern than, say, Summit Mall,” Julien said.
