The vibrant, Kenmore Cardinals shade-of-red building on the west end of Kenmore Boulevard, once home to a sheet metal company, is the new headquarters of the Better Kenmore Community Development Corporation.
With its new home, the agency, founded in 2016, can continue to support a Kenmore revival, its core mission.
“It’s very, very important for us to have a presence here on the Boulevard – a physical presence,” said Josh Gippin, executive director of Better Kenmore.
Better Kenmore will officially celebrate the grand opening of its new headquarters tonight, August 2, during the Kenmore First Friday event from 6 to 9 p.m. on Kenmore Boulevard. Along with a ribbon cutting, the event offers a kids zone, live music and more. Thanks to the new permanent space, rain is not a worry.
The building at 1028 Kenmore Blvd. previously housed the Lowry Sheet Metal Works, the Lowry Furnace Co. and the McCutchan Co., a heating and cooling contractor. It had been vacant for nearly 20 years.
John Buntin Jr. and his wife, Julie Ann, bought the property from the city in 2019, eventually gifting the building to Better Kenmore CDC.
“We were ready for it to move on to its next phase of whatever the building’s life was, and since Better Kenmore needed a new office, we thought, ‘seems appropriate,’” said John Buntin, the owner of neighboring Kenmore Komics. “They’re the ones we should give it to.”
John, who has owned Kenmore Komics for 37 years, said he never wanted to own the McCutchan building in the first place. But when he wanted to buy the alleyway between Kenmore Komics and the then-vacant building so it would remain a clean, green space, he and Julie Ann found themselves buying the entire property. In turn, they helped the property turn a new leaf.
“Lee McCutchan was just an amazing woman…,” Julie Ann said. “And I think both John and I learned a lot from her in terms of [how] it’s important to give back.”
“I think it was just really important to see it, you know, come back to life,” Julie Ann said.
Community center doubles as small business resource hub
It took nearly $250,000 to give the vacant building the face-lift it needed to create this new community space.
Renovations, furnishing and equipment were funded by ARPA money, along with support from the GAR Foundation, the Summit County Land Bank and the Akron Community Foundation. The CDC also got a Community Development Block Grant from the city so it can double as a small business resource hub.
Better Kenmore CDC has hosted a variety of small business development workshops this year, Gippin said, and will be able to continue supporting local small businesses.
The hub will offer space for one-on-one meetings with Akron-area small business owners (not just Kenmore business owners, although that’s the CDC’s focus), to help these businesses overcome individual challenges and find resources.
“These business owners need support,” Julie Ann said in reference to the resource hub as she looked at her husband. “Small business ownership is hard.”
Better Kenmore will officially celebrate the grand opening of the new headquarters tonight, Aug. 2, during the Kenmore First Friday event from 6 to 9 p.m. Along with the ribbon cutting, there will be a kids zone, live music and more. Thanks to the new permanent space, rain is not a worry.
