It's our privilege to welcome today's speakers, Mordecai Cargill, co-founder and creative director of Third Space Action Lab.

Esther Thomas, director of diversity, equity and inclusion with the City of Akron.

And Siqi Zhu, director of planning and urban technology from Sasaki.

Our moderator for today will be Liz Ogbu, designer and social justice activist who has been deeply involved in the Innerbelt project.

The topic of today's discussion is Reimagine Akron after the Innerbelt Mayor Shammas Malik, I believe you are in the room.

He's here.

Yes.

Shammas, we're especially glad that you're here today with us for this very important topic that is all about Akron's future.

I would now like to invite Lucas Duall, client advisor for SiebertKeck, to introduce today's moderator, who will be leading today's panel discussion.

Lucas.

- Hello, everyone.

My name is Lucas Duall, and I have the honor of working for SeibertKeck nsurance Partners.

Also, I get the honor of introducing our moderator, Liz Ogbu today.

Liz is a globally recognized expert on engaging and repairing unjust urban environments, from transforming a low income housing development on the grounds of a former plantation in Charlottesville, Virginia, to reimagining struggling public spaces.

Trying to navigate the post-apartheid landscape of Durban, South Africa.

Liz has a long history of working with communities to leverage the power of design to catalyze community healing and fostering environments that support people's capacity to thrive.

She is founder and principal of Studio O, a multidisciplinary design practice that works at the intersection of racial and spatial justice.

In addition, Liz has held academic appointments at several leading universities, and in 2023 was an inaugural University Fellow at the University of Virginia.

Liz has written for and been profiled in publications such as The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, and NPR.

Liz's honors include TEDx woman speaker, Aspen Ideas Scholar, Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center resident, and Manzanita Fellow for Radical Economic and Environmental Justice at Messer Refuge.

Her TED and TEDx talks, which share a creative process rooted in community, wisdom and healing, have been viewed over a million times.

Thank you, Lucas, for that introduction.

And while our panelists are coming up, I just would like to thank SiebertKeck again for their sponsorship of today's program.

- Good afternoon, everyone.

That was a little quiet.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

It's okay to talk with food in your mouth.

Well, it's a great pleasure to be here to speak with you today about a project that I've come to be quite passionate about.

And with three people that I think have a lot to say about the future of this important space within Akron.

Before we start, however, I think it's always important to kind of do some level setting so we're all kind of working with the same pieces of information.

And for me, I first came to Akron in 2021.

I had been contacted by the city to- about a piece of land, a highway, a northern section that had been decommissioned in 2016 and now was sitting vacant.

And there were questions about what should be done with it.

And they were really curious to understand what did the community want to see.

And so that launched a multiyear community visioning process that has then resulted in the current master planning process that is underway.

But as I came into town and tried to understand this piece of land, I understood that sometimes we can't just ask the what in terms of what do we do with this thing that is normally considered to be a blank slate near downtown?

We actually have to ask the who who lived here, who called this place home before it was a highway.

And I was struck very early on in the process as I talked to a former resident.

And they said that stories are sacred.

They need to be held, told and honored.

And so for me, that set up a process of starting to learn.

Well, what were the stories that this land held and how could we both honor that tell it and use it as a way to understand what might be before we go forward?

So I just wanted to do a quick little travel through history, to give you a sense, in case you're not familiar with what is the history of this land.

So in the 18th and 19th century, like much of Akron, the area was home to a number of indigenous groups, including the Ohio Iroquois, the Ottawa, the Wyandot Lenape, and the Ojibwe.

And then in the early- by the early 20th century, and it became a vibrant Jewish neighborhood.

We've actually tried to get some things about that history.

It's actually been hard to uncover, but we do know that there were a lot of vibrant businesses like, say, (unintelligable) Grocery which did continue on as the neighborhood transitioned to an African-American neighborhood in the 1930s, 40s and 50s.

That growth of, African-American population was fueled in large part by people who came to work in the rubber factories.

But that led to this area being known as Little Harlem.

Howard Street in particular, was this vibrant district filled with jazz clubs, the Matthews Hotel, the Green Door Monument, which stands, right at the start of Howard Street now.

Honors that it was owned by George Matthews, and it was one of the few hotels on the transcontinental railroad that served African-Americans.

What that meant, It brought folks like Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie to stay and play here in Akron.

We also know, as we talked to residents, that there were a lot of other iconic businesses like Sparkle Market, Margies and the Custard Stand, where apparently it was great to be seen and to see other people.

In the 1950s and 60s.

I think it's important to understand that the larger context in the US was that there was a postwar building boom that led to a lot of infusion of cash to do developments that were seen as ways to further develop cities, but also to connect, the city centers to the burgeoning suburbs.

In Akron, what that resulted in is a number of urban renewal projects that were done near downtown, including the Innerbelt.

Construction on the Innerbelt began in the 1970s, and continued on to the 80s, with multiple phases.

It was never completed as originally designed because ran out of money, but it's still had a tremendous impact.

Over a thousand families and businesses were, displaced, and it really left a scar in the neighborhood.

And what was interesting as I started the project and was talking to former residents, is that what was important to hold wasn't just those who were displaced from the land, but also those who were left behind.

So maybe the highway didnt need your house and you were just outside of the boundary, but that meant that you still lost the people who made this neighborhood home.

You still lost the services.

You were left with concrete.

But none of the people who made your life rich and worth living.

We also know from those who were displaced that for some.

It left generational impacts where families were never able to restart businesses in different locations, or who just carried this intense weight of grief as they moved forward.

By the time I started working on the projects in 2021, what we realized is that for many people, this was the first time they had talked about what had happened in almost 50 years, in large part because it had actually just been too painful to discuss.

But they could just remember was this.

And so part of the process of envisioning the future has been about giving the stories that led to Little Harlem a place to exist, but also the acknowledgment of what was taken away and what was lost and how do we use that as a foundation for how to move forward?

A lot of the ideas that came out of that initial community envisioning process, were things for the neighbor- things for the innerbelt, that actually would be what is a vibrant neighborhood that could come back there, but also how do we do things that honor the past as part of the seeds of how we think about the future?

And so that's why I'm excited today to talk about what's happening as part of the master plan.

I have just given a very brief snippet of the past.

If you want to learn more about what came out through all of that work, that preceded the master plan, there is a phase one report that you can find on the website, all 90 pages of it or if you want the shorter 20 page executive summary, it's there as well.

In 2023, the city of Akron successfully applied for a Reconnecting Communities grant.

It was one of the things that came out of the infrastructure law that was passed under the Biden administration, and it was a grant specifically for communities that were taking on infrastructure projects, or addressing infrastructure projects that had been previously used to divide communities.

Akron was one of 45 cities that won in the inaugural round, which was quite a feat.

The money that they received is now funding a master plan process.

A team led by Sasaki was chosen last summer, through a community, informed process.

And we're at the point where that master plan is nearly complete.

So as we talk today, we'll share a little bit about what is happening as part of the master plan and also what are some of the visions for the future.

And with that, I am going to enter into conversation with these lovely people.

Hi.

- Greetings - Hey.

- Hello - So, there is a lovely and extensive bio that are in the pamphlets that you have, and I'm not going to embarrass them by reading it up here.

But instead I'm just going to ask questions to get us started so you can hear a little bit more of how those bios plug into what they're doing with the project.

So for each of you, I would love you to answer who you are.

As in, what do you do for your day job?

What is your role with the Innerbelt project?

And then why?

I always think it's important to understand not just that we're doing these things as jobs, but they usually mean something.

And I think one of the things that's been interesting to me through this project is like feeling the importance and the weight of what is being done.

And so I'm curious to hear how working on this project has impacted you as well.

Esther, why don't we start with you?

- Okay.

Greetings and salutations My name is Esther Thomas, and I'm privileged to work.

in the mayor, Shammas Malik's administration as director of diversity, equity, inclusion and council liaison.

I, joined the administration last January, January 24th of 24 and was assigned to work on the Innerbelt project And I thought, that's great.

But wait, I'm not an urban planner.

I'm not economic development.

I'm a kid from Akron.

I'm a lawyer.

I did some things.

Magistrate, but, Wow.

HR.

So I get into this project, and what I didn't know at the beginning was that this project would be one of the most dearest things that I've worked on.

Because the Innerbelt, I was here.

I'm old enough to remember it.

I'm old enough to remember well, young enough to remember, that project.

And young enough to remember some of the additional projects that radiated from that on Grant and Thornton Street.

And Goose Town.

And some of those urban renewal projects that were leveraged by the Innerbelt project.

What does it mean to me to work, to have the privilege of working on this project to reconnect our community to right and address the devastating history, that the erasure of those homes, those neighborhoods, those cultural centers.

It means the world to me.

My family was part of that great migration that came from Birmingham, Alabama, to work in Akron to make a better life for their kids.

I wasn't here yet, but, contemplated, I suppose.

And they lived at- on Bell Street.

They lived on Grand Street.

Before they moved to Goodyear Heights.

This work, and what it means is that we have an opportunity to address a historic occurrence that harmed many people, not just in that moment, not just economically, but spiritually.

The memory of our homes, our neighborhoods.

When those are erased, it creates a gulf and it creates and grief.

And while creating a new structure, a reimagining will address that.

We always have to speak and remember the past so that we, one, don't create similar situations, but that we address and can heal as a community.

And part of that redress is to acknowledge these were homes, families, Jewish families, Black families, schools, cultural centers and a custard stand.

I know I feel about Strickland's okay.

Okay.

The one- you know, so this work is everything about memory, about the future, about honoring, the people who came before so that we make a better, stronger Akron.

- Thank you, thank you.

Thank you.

All right.

Yeah.

Yes.

- Tough act to follow.

My name is Siqi.

I'm an urban planner by profession.

And I'm, principal at a firm called Sasaki.

It's a national, planning urban design landscape architectural architecture firm.

I'm based in New York, and my colleagues in the firm are based out of many other places, Boston and Denver as well.

I should also say, we are part of a larger team.

So on this team, our partners from Third Space, Mordecai, which he'll talk a little bit more about.

We have WSP, which is a large, engine national, international engineering firm and City Architecture, architecture firm based in New York - Cleveland, among many other, team members.

So it's a very large, complex team.

And of course, the city's a big partner in all of this.

So I guess we'll talk more about the project later on.

But to the second part of your question Liz, I think, you know, one of the things we, sort of I spoke about when we came to Akron last year, Im obviously a newcomer to the city I didn't grow up in Akron.

I don't remember when the highway, you know, became the reality.

However, as a planner, you read about urban renewal and the highway, the phase- of the era of the highway construction in textbooks.

Right?

This is the stuff you learn about.

And it's, interesting to think about that in the 50s and 60s.

These were really good ideas.

These were the common sense of planning.

Right?

So, so in a way, it's interesting to be able to do this project, you know, 67, you know, 60 years on because, in a way, we are, challenging ourselves as planners to think about, like what?- How can you do better this time around and how do you not replicate the same mistakes of the first time, which is these are common sense, good ideas.

And, you know, this will benefit people.

And you do this thing in a way that's very unexamined and, uninterrogated.

Right?

So, so I think that's maybe the first reason and the second reason is, you know, having been in Akron many times over the last year and having collaborated with all the folks here in the community, I think that very abstract story has just taken on a lot more, density for me personally.

So, so it also has come to matter to me personally, you know, in a, in a great way.

So, both professionally and personally, this has become a really important project.

- Thank you.

- Mordecai.

- Awesome.

Well, I'm Mordecai, the co-founder and chief creative officer for ThirdSpace Action Lab.

And ThirdSpace reading room.

We're based in Cleveland, Ohio.

We are a grassroots solutions studio, which essentially means where, like, McKinsey and Parliament-Funkadelic have a soulful Black baby.

So you can imagine that that visual, what we're attempting to do is, applied racial equity.

And we do that through activating space and activating people.

Our role on the Innerbelt masterplan process, on this project rather is, the community engagement and equity strategist.

So I'm also joined by, two members of my team, Evan Green and, Akron's very own, Curtis Minter Jr.

But we're also, have been led by, I should say, and, and been working in collaboration with, with two exceptional Akronites, Carla Davis and Ebony Hill, who've been working as our, community coordinators.

Together, I would describe our, our team's role as having these, these three, components.

And perhaps this is better to describe it as like a metaphor.

So, one, we're a translator, between the community and the planning team, which in some ways entails trying to make these, technical terms and concepts, accessible to regular people.

An interpreter is a another function of our job, which is once we have created space for, this really diverse community to share their hopes and dreams and aspirations for, this place that, has so much meaning for so many people.

We are trying to, to make sure that it shows up and the planning documents, and sometimes it's more difficult than you might imagine because, when we think about the discipline and we think about how cities are built, so much has been done without consideration for regular people.

And in some ways, the vocabulary fails to make space for how people navigate space.

And I should also say that the the the last part of our, of our role is to serve as, I would say, an editor and, a reminder, sometimes in the hustle and bustle of a planning process, it is natural for us to try to kind of prioritize the things that make sense to us immediately, that are, training has equipped us to deal with these are technical problems.

But where we find ourselves having to do is, to you know, collegiately, but firmly, remind our team, our collaborators, not to forget the plot, not to forget what's important.

What's important is that this project is all about repair.

And that shows up throughout our planning process.

And finally, my connection to this project or, why it's important to me.

I'll just say that I started my, my trip to Akron.

on 105 or East 105th street which if you- you may know East 105 turns into opportunity corridor.

I ended my my travels here essentially on the Akron Innerbelt during that trip, you know what was very present in my mind is, the stories, the memories, the histories that have been lost to the past.

You know, these are two historically Black, once vibrant neighborhoods that no longer exist in the in the ways that my elders remember it to be.

And so this feels like a very unique opportunity to, try to push back against, history repeating itself.

And there's something important for, for us to learn in Cleveland about what we're attempting to do in Akron and for us to, to do something that can get shared with the world.

So thank you.

- So you can see we have a really great team working on this project.

I think one of the things that was always interesting to me when I was leading the community visioning process is that I'd go in to talk to people about, you know, what should we do with the Innerbelt?

And it was really hard for people to focus on just the northern section, which was the one that was decommissioned.

They're like, wait, what do you mean?

Aren't you talking about the entire Innerbelt?

What about the southern part?

which is actually where most of the homes were located.

So I'm wondering, Siqi, if you could help us all, situate ourselves in, like, what are we talking about?

What's the limit of the site?

That's for the master plan.

And then also, if you could just explain where the masterplan is in it's process.

- Sounds great, yeah Thank you.

- Ill hand you this - I can just pull up a map.

Which button is it?

- Green button.

- Alright.

So I can quickly talk about this, this question, this question came up a lot, when we started the process last fall.

So, to put simply, the scope of the project is to look at the entire Innerbelt, the northern section, which comes from MLK down to Exchange Street and then the southern section, which goes from exchange to I-76.

We're looking at the Innerbelt.

We're looking at the land under the Innerbelt, and we're also looking at the area around it.

So this is not a project that is restricted to looking at what's happening to the infrastructure.

So to Mordecais point about repair.

A lot of the negative impact of the highway was happening around it to the west of the highway especially.

So, it's important to say that the, you know, the area is actually much larger than simply what happens on the highway itself.

It's probably also important to, just delineate, you know, why we mentioned the northern section and the southern section.

And the reason for that is because some of you might know the northern section is being decommissioned.

Right?

So when you drive over, random parts there, you can see there is sort of fallow concrete in the middle where the Innerbelt used to be, whereas in the southern section, the Innerbelt is still functioning as an active roadway and is not under the city's control.

So, the - the imperative to look at the entire Innerbelt from north to south as well as the area around it really came from the community.

Right?

So it is important, as, as we've heard it from the communitys perspective, that we don't only address the section that the city controls, the sort of 30 ish acres that the decommissioned portion sits under.

But obviously we should also say just given the fact that the city controls one half of it, but not the other half, these different areas would require a different tactics.

Right?

So in the northern section, we have control.

We can do things more quickly.

In the southern section we need to do a vision level planning process.

We need to engage with higher levels of government and then figure out how to decommission that in a gradual way.

- Yeah.

And then just to talk about the where we are in the planning process.

So we mentioned that we started, in the fall 2024.

So we were here in July.

That's when we were selected.

And we've been going since then going through a number of deliberate phases.

Right.

So I think, again, echoing what Mordecai said, it was important that we didn't come with the pre-baked idea about what should happen with the Innerbelt.

And that was very much true.

We came with sort of radically opened my mind about what what can happen here.

Building Lizs work from phase one, and we move from the stage of, you know, analyzing what's there, talking to people about their, you know, past experiences and current experiences to a high level ideation process that involves the community and stakeholders.

And now we're in.

So I would say stage three out of four, which is we've come up with some very initial directions, which we're testing with the community and, you know, fleshing out.

And then in fall of this year, we'll bring out a close to final version of the master plan with all of the ideas concretized and, you know, much more visible.

So, - just keep it there.

- Yeah.

- I wonder if that is a good bridge to Mordecai.

You talked about going out into the community, and so I'm curious if you could give us a little more specifics about some of the things, how you're doing that, and then some of the things that, you and the community coordinators are hearing.

- Sure, sure, sure.

So, I'll start by saying that, part of our work is, what we describe as community collaboration.

And so that describes a, let's call it a menu of engagement tactics.

Not a recipe.

It's important to distinguish, we're trying to deploy our playbook and then also, based off of the types of questions that we need to get answered, the types of problems that we are attempting to collaborate around.

It may require us to fashion some new, new approaches, research some, some alternatives.

But at the core of what we've attempted to add into the engagement process is really to create some more spaces for, a different type of interaction.

And so there are these four, you know, big open houses where the community is receiving a whole lot of information.

You know, there's a whole lot of maps.

The maps are really dope.

There's a lot of information, things that you can take back with you.

But, that space doesn't always enable the type of intimate conversation that, a lot of people feel comfortable asking questions that they may feel like, all right, I should already know these things or it doesn't create the type of interaction that, slows the thinking down for some of our technical comrades here.

To really engage with why these things really matter.

So Siqi gave the example of, you know, how the way that we frame up the opportunity has evolved because of conversations that we've been having in community.

So it's not, as compelling of a hook to say, alright, we can't we cant actually come up with ideas for the part of the Innerbelt that you actually care about that you feel most connected to, only because the city doesn't get on it.

You know, we've had to at least consider how to do multiple things at once.

How do we continue to retain some ideas and provocations about what the future of the land around this roadway might become, and also how to demystify some of the, really esoteric, let's call it just red tape, you know, so some of these things are just not important to, to the citizens.

It's like, okay, that's yalls job.

You know, you figure out the red tape.

Another thing that I would mention is that, in addition to these open houses and, like, having focus groups and one on one interviews that are essentially snowballing.

So we meet somebody at an open house, somebody from the ThirdSpace team, either me or Carla, or Evan somebodys going to create time to follow up with this person.

We often don't have an agenda.

We're usually like, okay, let's get to know you.

Let me understand, what your connection is to this project.

Why did you even come to this open house?

You could be doing anything, you know?

But, tell me about your story.

I'm going to try to explain the best I can.

Like what you just experienced.

But more than that, I'm going to make sure that we find a way for the people who are- were trained and paid to be landscape architects, or be engineers can find some time to talk to you as well.

So our goal is to really create relationships, upon which trust can continue to be built.

Trust as that extends beyond just my team, but also, enables the city to take this work along.

And these are things that come up in, these community meals and in our everyday interactions.

And it's just to illustrate the point that there is a planning process that will inevitably end, but that the work will continue.

And so that's what we are attempting to add to this, to this team.

- Great.

Thank you.

Then coming back to you Siqi, I think this will be like a tag team between you and Esther.

You know, when we think of plans, we typically think of, like the drawing, right?

What is- where does the building go, where do the streets go, etc.

but in both the preamble that I gave but also, I think in each of your introductions, one of the things that came up is like the kind of economic and social history and how that also needs to be held and honored as we move through.

So as you're developing the plan, how do you balance this physical piece with that economic and social piece, like how does it come together to say, this is what we're creating that could actually be a thriving place for everybody?

- I can take it first?

- Well, I can go - Okay.

- You know, there's a couple- I mean, it's wise to look at this as a couple of pieces and parts.

There's many pieces and parts.

Part of it is the what is the physical structure?

What are the, what are the physical structures that are going to be built, constructed?

What's going to be removed?

What's going to be added?

But the other parts are what are- how- What is the human part?

What is the human software?

What are the, touchstones, the memories?

How can we evoke, a sense of community where there is now a highway and that, you know, that's part of the structure that is being created?

I'm a part of a team at the city and that team, the planning portion is read as led by Kyle Julien, who's our director of urban planning for the city of Akron.

It's also part of the team is, Susie Graham Moore, who's director of economic development for the city of Akron and those, you know, and I'm a part of that team.

And as, of course, we're led by the mayor and these efforts.

But part of that is to contemplate not only the physical structures and Kyle and his team, his design team, Daniel and Dylan and other folks, they are contemplating, how are these structures, what are the roads, what are the connections?

What is there, what needs to be there?

And but also what's the future and how do we build a structure, a road, a passageway to that future.

And that's part of that planning process.

Suzie Graham Moore, director of economic development, is doing an amazing job of helping us all think about not just today, but how are we going to, sustain anything that's built?

Who are the partners and the stakeholders that we're going to bring in to that?

And so those are also parts of this, you know, there'll be a physical structure.

But before we get to the physical structure, we have to build the community and the mental structures, for the capacity to build these physical structures.

I want to give a shout out to Carla and Ebony, Ebony Hill, Carla Davis, who are the community coordinators, because they are building that community piece, those relationships, information, translate in esoteric terms.

Listen, they're all esoteric.

I am not a planner.

Like, is it a road?

Is it a court?

All those things, but really engaging people around their issues of grief, around the memories, around the things that our parents talked about.

Howard Street or this, you know, where they went to this club or so and so when they moved here, they ived at this boarding house And so this is the team, and it takes all of us and it'll take actually all of Akron to imagine together what can be.

Because for now, 40, 50 years, we've had a highway.

Okay, who remembers where the custard stand was?

And how do we incite those memories and honor those memories moving forward?

But that's a big order of physical structures, but also mental structures and, addressing help.

I'm not sure that was the right answer.

- Oh, yes - Okay, onto you.

- I think, I think just to add to what Esther to saying, the, you know, Mordecai said the the kind of guiding principle of the plan is repair.

Right?

So when we started the plan the question back to ourselves, to the planning team in what we're asking was, you know, what does repair mean and is repair merely just putting, you know, structures back that the Innerbelt erased.

And the answer clearly as we can all imagine is no.

I mean, for one thing, we simply can't put everything back the way it was before.

That's just impossible.

And secondly, we all know that, just because you put the physical fabric of the city back together doesn't mean that the social and the economic fabric has been repaired.

Far from it.

So, you know, to Esthers point about this plan having many parts So one of the parts you'll see in the summer and in the fall is a physical picture of what this thing's going to look like, potentially in 30 years.

And that's just one part of it.

Right?

So besides the physical manifestation of the future, we're also looking at, policy and economic tools that advance, repair in the sort of broader sense of social and economic repair.

I think one final thing I should also mention is, the vision, the physical plan, you'll see, is a kind of, picture of what this thing will look like in probably 30 years time.

Right?

As you can imagine, it's going to take a very, very long time to dismantle the highway, repair the physical infrastructure, have it fill in with development It's a multi-decade endeavor.

So one of the things we're also thinking about is, how to stand up durable, civic structures in the city that can oversee the principles and visions of the plan, as you know, as time progresses.

Right?

So that's the other component.

- And Siqi I wonder, it seems like it might also be helpful.

I know that you produced- your team, produced a state of the planning area report, and you kind of outlined a couple key thematic areas.

It feels like that would be helpful so that people can understand sort of what are the thematic areas that people are looking at, you're looking at to figure out this plan?

Thank you.

So, actually, if you go to the Innerbelt website, if you go to the learning resources section, there is a version of the state of the Planning Area report available for download.

This is one of the first products that, came out of this master planning process back in February.

And the purpose of that is to build on the work that Liz did in phase one, which is primarily storytelling based.

In the second time around, we did more, let's say, data driven and analytical analysis of the study area, complemented by community engagement.

And the content of that report was divided up into many sections, reflecting the sort of multifaceted nature of repair.

Right?

So we looked at housing for one, state of housing in the study area around the Innerbelt, who has access to good housing, who doesnt doesn't have good access.

What are the housing challenges?

Economic opportunities.

Who has access to what kind of jobs?

The, open space and environment, mobility getting around.

Right?

How easy is it to get around?

What are some challenges, and areas where it's unsafe to, to walk around.

We also looked at, history and culture.

We also looked at this final topic, which is, a community capacity.

So all of these six, seven areas, you know, has come to define what we think of as repair.

So in the planning, in the plan that we're developing, we want to address each of these areas and come up with recommendations.

- So.

Great.

Thank you.

Well, time, as usual has flown.

And, so I've got one last question before we open it up to audience questions.

You know, this is a big project.

I do not envy the city.

But it's also an exciting opportunity, right?

To create a model, that the rest of the country can follow.

Because what happened here in Akron is actually happened in a lot of cities around the country, and a lot of cities are wrestling with highways that have reached the end of their useful life and or are trying to figure out what's next.

So I think the vision of what can be done here actually could be really quite, impactful, not just locally, but beyond.

But to that point.

Right?

It's not easy.

So I'm, I'm curious to hear from each of you what you perceive to be the greatest challenge to execute this vision.

And what's your greatest hope for if we get it right, what do we see?

- I'll start.

- Yeah.

Okay.

- You know, the- So it's the biggest hope?

Or that's the last one.

-Yeah Start with the challenge because then we can be bummed and then we can be excited.

- Okay.

Alright.

So, you know, it's a huge multi-generational project.

I mean, it started when some people in this room were children or it started before some people in this room, this room was born.

And so in order to address and repair that, it's going to take lots of time and lots of money, you know, federal money, state money, money money, stakeholders interest.

And that is a huge challenge.

The other huge and so but, you know, money's always for some a barrier.

But I really think about the people, you know, I think about how do we sustain interest in a neighborhood in a project that predates folks, you know, if it's, you know, Siqi said you know, it's going to take 20 or 30 years to, you know, fill in and have this great thing, 20 to 30 years.

Okay.

That's a long time.

So I think the biggest challenge is, engaging folks to keep their creative juices, imagine, imaginative forces to want to build this part of Akron, to reimagine this.

I will say when we talk about the reimagining Akron, it's already there.

I was in New York, side point, I was in New York, recently, and I went to see Gypsy.

The- being led by the Tony Award winning actress.

- No, it's, - Oh, it's, Yes.

Yes.

So memorable.

She is, I forgot.

So, and the first act there, one on the stage.

And, you know, she's African-American in this play.

And her child is African-American.

And they stop in Akron and on the Broadway stage is a huge Matthews Hotel sign with Akron.

And I couldn't believe that I was sitting in New York City looking at a depiction of the Matthews Hotel in Akron on North Hill.

Okay.

When we say what is the biggest challenge, it is keeping the idea that Akron is a great destination.

The idea that we can reconnect our community, the idea that what was lost can be remembered and built upon, keeping that alive and going for 20 to 30 years, being inclusive of the past, remembering that in the future.

Honoring- Remembering that in the present, and to honor that in the future.

That's a huge challenge.

And that huge challenge is actually my greatest hope that we as a community are able to do that.

- You stole my point.

- You can say it.

- No, no, no.

So I think, I'm going to basically slightly rehash what Esther said.

I think it's, the, the challenge, as we've mentioned a couple of times, this is a very long term plan, right?

This is, multi-decade undertaking.

And how do we come up with things, changes that are small enough and tractable enough and incremental enough that we can start to show something in the next few years while keeping, you know, true to that exciting, visionary future, 30 years from, you know, 30 years from today, you know, holding that balance is always, you know, it's a challenge that we it's very top of mind for us, I think, and then, you know, just, you know, given that it's 30 years, or more to implement this, I think the, the biggest, question mark, for, for us, I think, is, you know, how do we make sure that this plan has, maybe I would call civic durability, which is this idea that, you know, it can't it doesn't take just the city to make the plan happen.

It takes, the, support and collaboration of the community and then all of the important organizations, businesses, civic organizations in this room and in the city to make it happen.

And that is also why that is both a challenge and a hope.

Right?

The hope is that we're here today talking and thinking about this plan important to the future of the city.

And we can somehow stay together right outside of this room to, support it in the in the coming years and decades.

- Well, since we're short on on time, I think I'll just talk about, hope.

I feel like we should all just imagine what it what Akron will feel like.

Imagine the vibes if and when we do this right.

I think that's a compelling vision that people far and wide will buy into.

And, that's why I keep showing up that we have an opportunity to do something that hasn't been done before, repair, where everybody keeps telling us about.

So if we do this, we could actually change the course of history.

- Thank you.

With that, I'll turn it over for any questions from the audience.

- Thank you.

I'm Kamelia Fisher.

I am a board member of Akron Roundtable, and I have the pleasure of asking the questions from our audience.

So I'm going to combine some of them, but a, frequent question is, Are you aware of other cities that have successfully executed similar projects, and if so, what did you learn from them?

- Who wants to do you want to or I can do it.

- Yeah, well, you do it.

- Sure.

We, just on this team, on this, on the Sasaki team.

Alone, there have been, the team members have worked on actually 2 or 3 of these similar plans, of reconnecting communities through historic highways at various stages of implementation and also, in very, very different context, I would say, WSP Nora Anderson, who's here in this room somewhere and the firm that, that she represents, they worked on the Stitch in Atlanta, which is a stretch of highway, active highway that's under, that's semi underground.

And the proposal and I believe that's underway is to essentially deck over the whole thing and paying for that expensive infrastructure with incremental real estate value around it.

So that's one way of doing this in a particular context, in a particular kind of place.

We, one of my partners at Sasaki, ten years ago before any of this Biden, you know, sort of inspiration came about.

Did a conceptual proposal for decking over the Brooklyn Queens Expressway in northern Brooklyn, which is a section of the highway that, you know, historically is the most disadvantaged in the whole city.

And, in that case, the image sort of percolated for many years and, sort of finally found its moment, I would say in the last few years where, it was one of the pivotal elements of a successful reconnecting communities application to get money from the federal government.

So I would say, you know, and maybe Esther you want to speak about Rondo at all, but but I think Rondo is maybe the most relevant one.

But I'll let Esther speak to that.

But I think the, I think the idea of, the importance of engagement and building the sort of civic durability around this idea, I think Rondo best exemplified that.

- So, thank you.

Siqi for that.

In Minneapolis, Saint Paul area, theres a neighborhood called Rondo and they too had a highway just sort of go through a whole neighborhood and destroy things.

and so they have applied for funds and they've, you know, received funds in order to reconnect the community and to invest in this area.

The thing about Rondo, that's- that I learned that's so important is there was one guy, you know, was like 80 or 90 now who every day, I mean, every year did a Remember Rondo event, you know, a cookout, a neighborhood thing.

And so he did that for 25 years before there was funding to reconnect the highway.

And so when we talk about that sustained civic engagement, this one person, you know, and with others.

But he wanted to keep the idea of his neighborhood, the neighborhood that he grew up in alive.

And so he had an event every year, and it took 20 years for other people to, you know, align and finances and capital, to become available in order to make those changes.

So now Rondo hosts a conference every year for cities that have highway projects that have or they're, you know, where they're redecking a highway, put in a garden, or a walk, a park or useful, use of a former highway.

They now host a national convention to do that.

And Kyle Julien, our director of Urban planning, the city of Akron, and I presented at that last fall.

And the learning is Siqis right, civic- continued and ongoing civic engagement.

Remembering the place that was and bringing that, making it relevant today will lead to a future where even more people can partake in it.

- I'll also add that if you go to the website and get the phase one report, there are a bunch of precedents in there from projects and other cities that have aspects related to Akron.

And so you can use that to also look at what has been done in other places.

- Thank you.

The next question is the Innerbelt project clearly makes sense.

What is the main obstacle and what is your proposed solution?

- Wow.

- How long do we have?

- Yeah.

So, there are many obstacles, right?

Both.

If you look at the just the physical condition of the decommissioned section, you can probably imagine what it would take to unlock the the potential of that land.

To start with, there is a lot of highway infrastructure that is dramatically underused or not used, period.

And, underneath that, kind of what we call the spaghetti of highway is land that has complex sort of infrastructure underneath.

And then it's also, you know, 30ft below ground level.

So anything you develop will need to contend with those conditions.

So I would say, you know, one of the value add that we provide as technical planners is to figure out what is the most, feasible, implementable ways of untangling those conditions, in a way that unlocks value.

So that's I think that's one challenge.

And of course, the other challenges we talked about.

Time.

Right?

I don't know Mordecai if you want to say anything else about, the challenges of maybe, you know, like, really hearing from people in terms of, you know, what repair looks like to them.

I don't know if there's a- - As brief as I can make it that we're often having two different conversations or multiple different conversations at the same time.

So one of the challenges is just making sure that we're we're bridging across some language divides, you know, and, making sure that the priorities become more, let's say collaboratively, established.

So some things that are really important to the planning team and to the city are simply not that important to, to the community.

So being able to come to some collaborative agreement is essential, because I think another big challenge is just making sure that this project, this vision does not fall off the civic agenda, because the more time that passes, the less and less relevant it becomes, the the less interested people are in and supporting it.

- So there's a lot of questions about, what we can expect to see, suggestions for community garden suggesting it and for, parks, water features.

Can you just kind of give a very quick overview of what they can expect?

And if there's a place for them to go watch that or look at those ideas or make contributions, share that with them as well.

- Liz, there's one slide that has the the five circle- - Yeah.

I'm going to give you this.

- just quickly pull that up.

I won't spend too much time talking about this, but, so just to give a preview of the, of the planning direction coming out of the, coming out of the plan.

So obviously we like, like I said, we're looking at how to physically transform the area around the Innerbelt.

And then all of the program and policy tools layered on top of that to achieve repair.

When we talk about the physical ideas, you know, to the questions about is it going to be a community garden is going to be something else.

The way we're thinking about it is, a number of complementary sort of big moves.

So just to give you some examples of what those big moves are, one of those is to really focus on the East-West connections that are divided by the Innerbelt, looking at for example, Exchange Street and especially (unintelligable) Boulevard which is the historic Wooster you know, Wooster Avenue.

and the heart of the Black business district.

And if someone wants to get engaged in the process before the end.

-That's great - How would they do that?

So I would, the number one thing I would do is go to the website AkronInnerbelt.com sign up for email, updates.

So we do a monthly email newsletter, which recaptures, you know, everything that happened this month.

There is going to be a number of, smaller group You know, we've been calling them meals and conversations, but maybe you can speak a little bit more about that.

So we have scheduled a number of smaller kind of smaller group discussions that are topically focused.

I know actually, I've probably spoken to some of you in this room, so we've done a round of, roundtables and interviews with important civic organizations and business organizations in the city.

So we will continue to do that in the next round.

And then, like Liz said, we're going to have more of a capstone moment sometime in September.

Day TBD, at which point we'll see a close to final version of the master plan.

But first thing first, get yourself signed up on the email list.

That's how you hear about everything that's coming out of coming out of here.

Yeah.