The City of Akron is requesting qualifications from experienced urban design consultants to complete a Reconnecting Communities Master Plan for the Akron Innerbelt study area.

Akron, Ohio is a city of great contrasts. Settled in the early 1800s, its location at the highest point of the Ohio and Erie Canal made it a crossroads of transportation and trade. Within the span of a century, Akron went from being the fastest growing city in the country in the early 1900's, to a peak population of nearly 300,000 in 1960, to losing almost one third of its population by the year 2000. At the beginning of the 20th century, workers came to the city in droves to work in the rubber industry. This growth was later reversed when the factories closed. What was once a gritty global center of tire manufacturing is now just a few miles bike ride from the 33,000-acre Cuyahoga Valley National Park, created in 1974.

Today, while Akron faces many challenges, the city is also a dynamic place to live and work, with vibrant neighborhoods, abundant parks, rich arts and cultural offerings, and a strong sense of community. The Akron Innerbelt was constructed in the early 1970's in an effort to stabilize and reinvigorate Downtown. Coupled with several urban renewal projects, the Innerbelt cleared a wide path through the city. It also displaced a vibrant, predominantly African American community and split several neighborhoods. But like many urban renewal projects from that era, the Innerbelt never fulfilled its promise of revitalization for the city and its residents.

By the late 1990s, this highway that was designed for a capacity of 120,000 cars per day saw traffic counts fall to only 18,000 cars daily. It had literally become a road to nowhere. In 2022 the US Department of Transportation issued a Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot (RCP) Grant Program, Akron recognized it as an opportunity to create an equitable and healing-centered Master Plan vision for the vacant Innerbelt site.

Akron's RCP proposal is one of only 39 planning grants awarded by DOT out of 435 applications. The City of Akron owns a significant portion of the Innerbelt study area, and extensive community outreach regarding the future of the site has been performed over the past three years. We are now ready to move forward with reimagining the Innerbelt site as a catalyst for positive change in our community. Successful completion of this Master Plan will give Akron a clear strategy for moving forward and will position the city well to apply for a Reconnecting Communities Implementation Grant in the near future.

The purpose of the RCP Program is to reconnect communities by removing, retrofitting, or mitigating transportation facilities that create barriers to community connectivity. The Akron Innerbelt Master Plan will achieve these goals by creating a shared and equitable vision for this land that allows it to contribute to the long-term economic viability and vitality of the city. Through these efforts, we can begin to heal the physical and emotional scars left by the highway, and move forward as a better, stronger community.