In 1972, Firestone Park native Michael Litvik was a new hire in the mailroom of Firestone Plant #1. He stepped onto the elevator that connects the iconic clock tower to the other levels of the building. One other person boarded the elevator with Litvik — Raymond C. Firestone, son of Firestone Tire & Rubber Co. founder Harvey Firestone and the company’s CEO at the time.
Litvik said the memory has stayed with him.
“There I was in the mailroom making $2.02 an hour, in the elevator with Raymond C. Firestone,” Litvik said. “There couldn’t be a better extreme: the lowest peon there is next to Raymond C. Firestone, the CEO of Firestone.”
Litvik had two uncles and a grandfather who retired from what he called the “Firestone family.” As the City of Akron discusses the future of the Firestone Plant #1 site, it’s clear that it’s more than a building or a project to Litvik and other residents.
“It’s a historic landmark that obviously recognizes the Firestone Tire & Rubber Co., but it also recognizes Harvey S. Firestone’s great-grandkids and every man and woman who stepped through those doors to work in either the office or the factory,” Litvik said.
Litvik was one of the attendees at a Wednesday information session at Firestone Park Community Center, the first in a series of four community conversations the city is hosting about the future of the clock tower and front bay of the industrial site — and whether all or part of it will avoid the wrecking ball.
Firestone Plant #1 became Akron’s responsibility in 2013
At Wednesday’s meeting, Suzie Graham Moore, Akron’s director of economic development, explained the numerous hurdles she said the city has encountered in its efforts to redevelop the 12-acre plot the Firestone plant sits on.
Additional Firestone meetings hosted by the City of Akron
Firestone Park Community Center (1480 Girard St.)
Feb. 10, 2 – 3:30 p.m.; Feb. 12, 6 – 7:30 p.m.
The City of Akron became the owners of Firestone Plant #1 in 2013. It took on the 1 million-square-foot historical site with “optimistic hearts,” Moore said, and sought developers who would redevelop the site to create jobs in the area.
The city received numerous offers to turn the plant into residential mixed-use, she said, but environmental covenants and deed restrictions on the property ruled out anything but industrial and commercial development options.
While the city initially intended to preserve the historic clock tower along with the building’s front section, the tower was a 1920 addition to the 1910 building. It lacks the structural integrity to stand on its own and requires the infrastructure of at least some of the front “wing” of the building, Moore said.
“We thought we could redevelop it,” she said. “The site is ideal; the building is not.”
The city received a one-time demolition grant for $6 million, but that grant expires in the coming months. The city has set aside an additional $500,000 in city funds for demolition and $1 million for asbestos remediation. Additionally, the annual cost to secure the building is more than $50,000.
The cost of a total teardown of the plant and tower came out to more than $7 million, Moore said. Projects that would preserve the front bay of the building in part or in whole raised the estimate to more than $12 million.
Saving the Firestone clock tower
Other ideas to memorialize the influence of the Firestone plant on Akron’s history include reinterpreting the clock tower, a 17-foot cubic structure on all sides, using the original clockwork and potentially restoring it to functionality in another location.
The cheapest project, preserving only the clock face, wouldn’t align with an agreement between the city and Ohio’s State Historic Preservation Office, which authorized the plant’s demolition only if the clock tower was preserved.
Since surveys of the plant’s structural integrity revealed cracks at the corners of the bricks and a separation of the buttresses from the tower itself, Moore said, preserving a free-standing clock tower will be difficult.
Jeff Wilhite, the District 4 Summit County Council member, said at the meeting that he wanted to see the clock tower preserved, as had been the city’s original plan.
“It was understood by my constituents that we were going to keep the tower,” Wilhite said during the meeting. “We need to put a line in the sand and let these ladies and gentlemen know it’s not going anywhere. If we pick [the belfry] up and save it, we need commitment that it will be put back on that site.”
Moore said the purpose of the community conversations is to gather public sentiment and brainstorm ideas regarding how to preserve and redevelop the land in a way that is agreeable to residents, the city and the state preservation office. Wilhite floated the idea of a fundraiser to close the budget gap.
“We just celebrated [Akron’s] 200th anniversary last year, and you want to erase 116 years by getting rid of this,” Wilhite said. “If you erase it, it’s gone. Everybody understands that … you’ve got to try to raise the money.”
