A Shared Sense of Purpose
5 lessons from inspirational public space efforts in Akron
Earlier this month, the Civic Commons Learning Network hosted a multi-day learning journey to Akron, Ohio, to better understand what this city in Northeast Ohio had learned from six years as a Civic Commons demonstration city. Over 2.5 days we delved deep on the Akron Civic Commons model and talked with more than 30 community leaders and residents making change happen, together.
When a coalition of community leaders began reimagining their civic commons in 2016, they were ready to do things differently. Six years later, the story of Akron provides insight and inspiration. By breaking down silos, reconnecting neighborhoods and “moving at the speed of trust,” Akron is paving the way for a more hopeful, equitable future.
Akron’s investments in three neighborhoods (Summit Lake, Ohio & Erie Canal Park and downtown) and the Ohio & Erie Canal Towpath Trail that connects all three are examples of how a city can knit together disinvested and isolated communities through collaborative reimagining of public places. Temporary and permanent design features and regular programming are reestablishing the historic 100-acre Summit Lake, the namesake of the surrounding neighborhood, as a place of civic pride and play, bridging diverse neighborhoods including Ohio & Erie Canal Park and fostering economic development and public life in Akron’s downtown.
Through exploring Akron Civic Commons efforts across its three neighborhoods, it became clear that the ethos of the civic commons is strong in Akron.
Civic pride radiated throughout our many conversations. It was palpable. There was a shared sense of purpose among local government officials, nonprofit leaders and staff members, small business owners, local developers and residents, that together they were creating a stronger, more welcoming Akron. Every person we met held a piece of the broader story, creating a tapestry of the community that embedded the spirit of the civic commons, of working together toward the common good, at every turn.
Here are 5 lessons from our study trip that illuminate how their public space work is reinforcing this ethos:
Prioritizing people and diversity downtown is smart strategy
We began our visit with a walking tour of downtown Akron. Similar to many downtowns across the country, Akron’s was hit hard by the pandemic with workers going remote and not yet fully returning to the office. Fortunately, before the pandemic the city began focusing on a number of people-first strategies that have attracted new residents downtown and now a $10M transformation of nearby Lock 3 Park is in the works to convert it from a concert and event space into a 365-day park shaded seating, landscaped gardens, artwork, ice skating areas and a performance pavilion.
To foster a truly diverse downtown, representation matters. Celebrating civil rights and women’s rights, a committee of representatives from local organizations has commissioned Sojourner Truth Plaza. This new public space under design in downtown Akron will celebrate Sojourner Truth and her message of equal rights for all to commemorate her “Ain’t I a Woman” speech that was delivered there in 1851. This will be the first statue of a Black woman in the entire state of Ohio.
In recent years Downtown Akron Partnership (DAP), the local Special Improvement District manager, has doubled down on ensuring downtown is a space for everyone. Through public art installations reflecting the many faces of Akron, performances, health and wellness classes offered by diverse talent in public space and support for small minority-owned businesses, DAP has intentionally sought to amplify socioeconomic mixing through programs and communications that facilitate welcoming.
The award of two federal TIGER grants in 2016 and 2018 has helped spur conversion of downtown’s Main Street from a fast-moving, 4-lane artery into a Complete Street with ample sidewalks, protected bike lanes, a more robust tree canopy and reduced speeds. The result is a Main Street that welcomes walking and biking, an atmosphere that encourages crossing the street to grab an ice cream cone from the local shop before heading to a concert at Lock 3.
While Main Street was being transformed, so was an entire block of Main Street buildings that had sat vacant for a decade. The Bowery Project redeveloped 6 vacant historic buildings, directly adjacent to civic assets such as Akron Civic Theatre, and Lock 3 and Lock 4 parks into a mixed use development with ground floor retail, a new 200-seat black box theater called The Knight Stage and 92 new apartments above. And the Bowery isn’t the only new residential units: since 2019, 223 new residential units have been added to downtown Akron, and another 468 have been renovated. With a 90 percent occupancy rate, the momentum for attracting more residents to live downtown is just beginning.
Howard Parr, executive director of Akron Civic Theatre (which also manages The Knight Stage) credits his participation in Akron Civic Commons for changing his perspective on the entire purpose of his organization. “The Civic isn’t an arts organization, it’s a community and economic development organization that uses arts as its tool for advancing these goals,” said Parr. The theater leadership and staff are now just as concerned with what is happening outside of their building, including in the adjacent public spaces, as they are with what goes on within its four walls. In recent years the Civic commissioned large scale murals overlooking Locks 3 and 4 and is currently building a deck overlooking Lock 3 park to further extend entertainment and engagement outside the theater.
As Brooks Rainwater from the National League of Cities says in his recent Fast Company article, “For so long, modern city life has been centered around work. Now, cities should invest in public spaces like parks, libraries, community centers, and better transportation options that drive people to places other than offices.” Akron has laid the groundwork and is strategically investing in public space to prioritize people and diversity downtown, which will continue to serve it well as a recovery strategy moving forward.
Move at the speed of trust
We spent our second day of the visit exploring Summit Lake and Ohio & Erie Canal Park. A common mantra in Akron is to “move at the speed of trust,” which reflects the approach the Akron Civic Commons team has taken to its work, especially in these two neighborhoods. Across the country levels of trust are at all-time lows, and in many Black and brown and low-income communities, this distrust is well-warranted. According to Akron Civic Commons convener Dan Rice, decades of disinvestment — particularly in the Summit Lake neighborhood — had contributed to community residents who described a history of “things being done to and not with, and promises made and not delivered.” Rather than being beholden to externally driven project timelines and election cycles, the team has been and is committed first and foremost to developing authentic relationships and building trust in community. “The trust is more important than the product,” says Rice.
Sandra Saulsberry, a Summit Lake resident and community leader agreed. “Trust is a two-way street. Both sides need to be accountable,” she said. How can you build trust? According to Sandra, listen, show up and do what you say.
Trust is built one action at a time. But it starts with a mindshift: moving away from seeing public space work as a series of transactions and toward seeing it as a network of relationships. The Akron team met people on their porches and front yards. They hosted potlucks at the parks to break bread alongside residents and created simple programming like s’mores, free weekly canoeing at Summit Lake and a regular concert series at Ohio & Erie Canal Park. Residents became members of the Akron Civic Commons team, sat on steering committees and when positions became available, whether as park ambassadors, nature center greeters, storytellers, or data collectors, local residents were hired to fill the roles. The team used the process of transforming public space to create a million moments for human connection, and these regular interactions have fostered trust.
Demonstrate while planning
“Pilots say we’re serious about making an investment,” says Akron City Council President Margo Sommerville. Rather than assuming a planning process should be fully complete before an investment is made, Akron Civic Commons has deployed a “planning while doing” approach. It is an iterative method of listening, piloting, assessing the public’s response and making permanent investment in the public space changes and programs that are well-received.
For instance, in meetings early on in the project, Summit Lake residents expressed that the lake was dangerous and requested a fence around it. By employing deep listening to truly understand, the team recognized that the underlying fear being expressed was trepidation about the lake’s untended edges. Residents literally couldn’t see where the lake ended and the land began, and were worried that children may fall in and drown. Rather than a fence, the solution co-created with residents was to test a seasonal pilot of a beachhead, with a design that made the water’s edge amply visible alongside picnic tables with umbrellas, porch swings and grills. The physical changes were inviting for community members, spurring summer gatherings like BBQs and increasing safe interactions with the lake. After a successful season, the beachhead became a permanent place, with investments in higher quality materials that can weather the elements.
A pop-up nature center and programming focused on wildlife education, urban gardening and water-based recreation was piloted for a few years by the region’s parks agency, Summit Metro Parks. This was the first time this county-wide parks agency had taken an iterative approach and it compelled the organization to transform a vacant building on the shores of Summit Lake into the Summit Lake Nature Center that opened to the public in 2021. Without the pilot of the nature center, it is very unlikely that the commitment to a permanent space would have been made.
Currently the Summit Lake Loop Trail is in its pilot phase with a permanent trail expected to break ground later this summer as part of an overall $10M Summit Lake Vision Plan.
Residents believe the change they can see. Demonstrating while planning leads to a productive rhythm to public space work. This drumbeat of tangible actions offers an opportunity for residents to experience change in process while longer-term investments are being planned for the future.
For cross-silo efforts convening is key
Public spaces are often managed by separate departments or organizations that work in silos, without considering the benefits of alignment and layered investment. The wide cross-silo collaboration represented by Akron Civic Commons has provided the critical connective tissue to support success. While the team started out small, it intentionally created a big tent approach to the work and created a diverse leadership table with representatives from a variety of local organizations and government departments, as well as neighborhood residents, as part of its “core team.”
This collaborative approach means wins are jointly celebrated and risk is shared. As Demetrius Lambert Falconer of Summit Metro Parks explained, we are “better together than apart, and no one organization has to carry that burden on their shoulders.”
The core team in Akron has met monthly, at the same time and location for nearly six years running. These monthly meetings have created a forum for regular connection across assets, projects, programs and neighborhoods. With multiple representatives from each organization serving as part of the team, redundant social networks have been created that can hedge against turnover. This, paired with consistent storytelling has built collective and institutional knowledge for this new way of working.
Civic Commons is a new way of doing business
In Akron, the four outcomes of Reimagining the Civic Commons — civic engagement, socioeconomic mixing, environmental sustainability and value creation — became values that are informing a new way of doing business both within and across a multitude of participating organizations.
The civic commons efforts influenced the creation of a new department in the City of Akron. The Office of Integrated Development (OID) was formed in 2018 to bring together existing departments including planning and urban development, economic development, downtown operations, recreation and elements of engineering under a single umbrella. This cross-silo team is focused on creating accessible, healthy public spaces and a resilient, opportunity-rich economy for residents of Akron. OID’s strategic framework commits to co-creation with residents and local businesses, and prioritizes quality public spaces as a core community and economic development strategy. Akron’s Mayor Horrigan has followed through on the OID framework with significant investments of public resources into public spaces to spark neighborhood resilience and economic recovery, including using federal COVID recovery dollars for the planned transformations of Lock 3 Park downtown and expanded work at Summit Lake through the Summit Lake Vision Plan.
In similar fashion, when Akron Metropolitan Housing Authority (AMHA) was awarded a $450,000 HUD Choice Neighborhoods planning grant for Summit Lake at the end of 2020, it built upon the existing Akron Civic Commons collaboration and resident-led approach.This local housing authority is applying the values and framework of the civic commons to a neighborhood strategy that extends well beyond its housing properties. The momentum of the improvements and investments in public space is now being leveraged by AMHA to develop a shared vision for existing housing including the Summit Lake Apartments, the public realm of the broader neighborhood, and the programs and services to support wellness and quality of life.
During our time together in Akron, we were reminded that creating a robust civic commons means process is just as important as product. By embedding shared values into every aspect of the work, one project at a time, the cross-silo Akron Civic Commons team has successfully created system-wide buy-in to investing in public space and doing so in a way that delivers real outcomes in communities. The work in Akron encourages us to consider how to resource the systems, not just the projects.
A special thank you to Akron Civic Commons team members who led the planning of this learning journey: Amber Genet and Dan Rice of Ohio & Erie Canalway Coalition; Kyle Kutuchief of Knight Foundation; and Bronlynn Thurman of GAR Foundation.
Reimagining the Civic Commons is a collaboration of The JPB Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, William Penn Foundation, and local partners.
