- Hey out there Akronites.

Welcome to year eight of "Around Akron with Blue Green".

And wow, do we have an amazing year ahead of us?

First it's off to North Hill, then it's over to Goodyear Heights.

Then it's off to an amazing flower farm.

Now, to kick this show off today, I'm gonna head up to North Hill to meet up with Justin Chenault and learn all about the amazing things that are going on in North Hill.

(soft upbeat music) - I'm an Akron kid, born and raised in Akron, actually grew up on the west side of Akron.

And then after I moved back from DC, there's something about North Hill that just felt like there's something beautiful about DC 'cause it's a ton of cultures, right?

And North Hill had that experience then I said, I wanna figure out how to spend more time in this place.

(soft upbeat music) You're in Akron's International District and one thing that we are really understanding is how do we use cultural tourism as an economic driver?

And we're seeing what that looks like.

I think there's a more conversation with our businesses 'cause what we're seeing is a lot of our businesses haven't had to rely on American born dollars, right?

So how do we invite people into these spaces and create intersectional experiences?

And that's the next phase that we're focused on is building a merchants association or neighborhood.

Get our businesses talking together, so when we have events, they're all saying the same thing, that they're inviting new people into their space.

But we have 15 international markets, we have a variety of restaurants here in the area from the old Italian community to our New American community.

If you're looking for something new, it's here in the neighborhood.

(soft upbeat music) We're transitioning into development.

We've always done arts and culture programming which is built into the fabric of the organization but in order for us to really start thinking about how we transform the neighborhood, we have to get into development.

We have to think about what our commercial corridors are doing.

So the building that's behind us where the road robots are at, we purchased that in 2022 and we should be breaking ground sometime soon, in the next few months.

So we will have affordable housing units on the second floor.

It will be a mixed use building, right?

So the first floor, we're gonna continue to build on our relationship with restaurateurs.

So we'll have a restaurant in there, probably something fast casual.

We're still trying to identify whom that is.

It'll be co-working space on the first floor and we'll also have micro retail space as well for entrepreneurs.

Our offices officially will be in the basement.

And this will be a part of how we start revitalizing our commercial corridors here in North Hill.

Part of the strategy is when you're waiting for these larger million dollar projects, what do you do?

And we can't continue just to have dilapidated buildings in our neighborhood.

And one thing that we found as an easy way to do it is to work with a lot of our aerosol artists, right?

They move quick, they also have a relationship with their art going away at some point, right?

That's been a fantastic relationship and we wanna really understand as we begin to do more, what does the community wanna see?

What is the motivation when we think about North Hill?

And we wanna actually put pride in the neighborhood and there's a lot of data and research that talks about what art does and how it transforms community.

And we're using that as a tool right now and since then, so many business owners are like, "Hey, when's my wall coming?"

And we're so excited about that 'cause now our businesses are thinking about how they can be a part of the development in North Hill, how artists see that there's opportunity to make money in the neighborhood doing this.

So it's a really unique opportunity for us to continue to build engagement.

(soft upbeat music) People Park is a premier event space in North Hill.

We've added some other elements this year including a shipping container that functions as a beverage center.

We were able to pull a permit so we could sell beer and wine.

And we wanted to offset that with our food trucks that actually come.

We're just trying to really understand how we can be a conduit for entrepreneurs and create a space in the neighborhood that people wanna come to.

(soft upbeat music) How do we celebrate the legacy and the history of our neighborhood while also encompassing our new American experiences?

And be frank, there's a quiet tension that we believe as an organization that we can solve through better arts and culture programming and better merchants association building in our neighborhood.

The Italian history is gorgeous in our neighborhood.

The African American history is gorgeous in our neighborhood but we're not finding ways to celebrate that enough.

And we wanna change the dynamic by having, again, intersectional experiences, multicultural intersectional experiences in our neighborhood.

So that's something that we are driving for, that's something that we've been prototyping I think over the past couple years.

But kids can't live in People's Park, it has to be in our commercial corridors.

It has to be when people think about the neighborhood, they understand that it has a legacy, right?

And it has a bright future.

(soft upbeat music) North Hill has some fantastic parks.

One that will be opening later this year will be Howard Street Heritage Courtyard.

It's about 90% finished, we haven't been able to pick our date 'cause we're still dealing with contractors.

But it's gonna be a gorgeous park that's gonna celebrate the legacy and the history on Howard Street.

It's gonna have a vibrant North Hill sign that's gonna be lit up.

It's gonna be Akron's first interchangeable mural wall.

There's paths and benches and it's right at the intersection of Howard and East Cuyahoga Falls Avenue.

We can't wait for what that park is gonna do.

The program that we're gonna be able to do in that space is gonna be a game changer for the neighborhood.

(soft upbeat music) - Next up, it's over to Goodyear Heights to learn all about the Linda Theater.

Let's go see what the Linda Theater is all about.

(soft upbeat music) - It was originally Linda Theater and the story goes that it was designed by a 22 year old whose dad was a contractor.

And basically, they worked together but it was primarily the young man's project.

And when he put the theater together and they decided to name it, Linda was his little sister.

She was two years old at the time.

And this was in 1948.

And just last week I got a message from a member of her family, Linda's family, saying that she was gonna be in town that next week and she'd love to come see it.

They knew that there was a new owner and she was in town and she hadn't been here since she was like 20 years old.

You know, obviously, if she was two 74 years ago, she's in her mid-70s.

She came with her whole family.

We were showing the movie "Sound of Freedom" the previous weekend, Labor Day weekend.

And I saw the movie on Monday with my wife and after I was done seeing the movie, I was pretty moved by it and I said, "You know what?

"We need to show this one more time "before we move on to the next movie.

"Let's show it on Wednesday and let's pay it forward "and we'll pay everybody's admission to come see it."

And I said, "If we get 30 or 40 people "to come see the movie, that's a win-win."

And we ended up having 200 people come to see the movie on Wednesday.

And that was the day that she came down too.

So I got to introduce her in front of as many people as have been in this theater and in maybe even years at one time, you know.

If we get 50 people, we're like, "Woohoo, we had a good night."

But there's 500 seats, so we have plenty of room and it would look pretty good with 200 people in here.

(soft upbeat music) Both this building and the one next door that used to be the post office were both purchased from Ted Bear.

And yes, he does still own the Highland and it's an interesting dynamic 'cause that's really the closest theater to here too and he had primarily used the Highland to show adult movies and the Linda was more catered to the younger, the more PG oriented type movies.

We wanna branch up off a little bit and try to do more movies that might attract adults.

We are gonna do "The Exorcist" next month since it is Halloween, for example.

In between "The Exorcist", we're gonna do "Paw Patrol" and then we're gonna do "Five Nights at Freddy's".

So we're trying to expand our audience a little bit but keep in mind that there's been success here with the kids and grandparents bringing their kids to see movies like "Paw Patrol" or "Little Mermaid" did real good here, for example.

So again, first run movies that are PG are probably what, that's what has been done here for the last 10 years.

(soft upbeat music) We have, Cuttin Corners is the hairstylist.

Anya is her name and she's been here for 20 plus years.

Everybody knows her but Anya is a wonderful lady and she does good work.

She has one other stylist in there and they're considering a third.

The next store over is Bay Window Collectibles and he sure has primarily, it's a trinket store.

You can go in and you can buy posters and t-shirts and he's got a lot of sports t-shirts for example, and jerseys and CDs and VHS tapes and oddball things like different collections of cups from Hard Rock Cafe or things like that.

And you know, a lot of interesting trinkets.

(soft upbeat music) If you're a first run movie theater, which is what we currently are, I can't say that that's what we'll always be because there's a lot of restrictions that are placed on us when we run a movie that's a first run.

One of the restrictions is that we basically are leasing our theater to them for a specific amount of time.

And we cannot use that screen for anything but that movie.

Talk about compensation to the movie companies, they take a percentage of the Box Office.

So we call in every night and let 'em know how many people came in.

And at the end of the run of the week, we send a report in with the number of people that we had attend the movie, they know how much we charge for tickets and they take a percentage.

The percentage varies depending on the movie.

Or even a shorter time period, if it's a old classic or something, that would be a one day rental.

But again, the percentage would be smaller but that's still how the system would work.

(bright upbeat music) Cartoons became a popular commodity going back to the 40s and they generally would run a cartoon with the movies back in those days.

And you know the collection that I showed you over there of my dad's old eight millimeter cartoons when he was a kid, he would do whatever he did for money and get enough money together to then buy a cartoon and then he would show the cartoons and he'd charge all his friends like a penny or a nickel or something like that to come watch his eight millimeter movie cartoons that were all "Mickey Mouse" and those things.

But when you go into like the 60s and 70s and Hanna-Barbera cartoons, he had Yogi Bear and then you had the whole "Roadrunner", "Bugs Bunny", Warner Brothers stuff, you know we could do a Warner Brothers week and show "Roadrunner" and "Bugs Bunny" cartoons and then we could do, the next week we could do "Teenage Ninja Turtle" cartoons.

So there's a lot of options with that one.

Of course, we'll have to offer little boxes of cereal as part of our concessions when we do that.

(soft upbeat music) - Next up we're headed right next door to learn all about Cafe Rewind and the Afterlife nightclub.

Let's go see what they're all about.

(bright upbeat music) - The building next door was really the reason that this whole thing even began because my partner, David Schreyer, was renting the building from the same gentleman that owned this building, Ted Bear.

And he wanted to take the building and convert it into something completely different.

Prior to him taking over the building, it was being rented to the Postal Service.

It was a post office.

And I think it was a post office for 20 years or so.

And prior to that, it was an AMP grocery store and it was built in 1949, 1950 range.

And AMP became a pretty popular series of grocery stores through the 50s and 60s, I think.

So it started as a grocery store and really was not set up to be a nightclub at all.

And so Dave completely gutted it and started from scratch and redesigned it so that he'd have still have his area where he could do his tattoo studio but then he's also worked to build a cafe over there.

And we have a nice stage with lots of lights and it's gonna be a concert club, it's a gaming club.

The whole front room is eventually gonna be all dedicated to games and pool tables and things like that.

So there's that side of entertainment in there.

Basically, it's kind of an ADHD entertainment facility.

We're a whole bunch of different things and we can't decide which one we wanna do.

So we just do 'em all.

(bright upbeat music) All the murals on the building were all drawn by Dave Schreyer.

He's the tattoo artist that's my partner in the whole project here and he is an exceptionally talented artist.

So all of the drawings that are on the Afterlife building, he does those in an amazing fast amount of time.

And all the artwork that's in the Afterlife building itself is all his work.

(bright upbeat music) Well, the front area is basically for merchandising, selling tickets.

As you walk through the entrance into the large room, you walk into the cafe and the cafe will be open during the day.

We have a ramen bar that has a variety of selections of things you can mix in with that.

And we also do sandwiches, we hot press sandwiches and salads and then we have a large variety of various teas and coffees with flavorings and all that kinda thing.

So it'll be a pretty comfortable atmosphere to go sit down and have lunch or have something to eat before you come over here and watch a movie.

(bright upbeat music) It's a reasonably big stage.

That was important because I want it to be attractive to have any type of variety of bands.

If you have a 12-piece band with a full horn section, we have room for you.

If you're a trio, then you got a lot of room to run around.

It's a big stage.

I got really involved with doing lights and there are 40 moving headlights on the stage that I can control from the computer and they have, so we can do all kinds of really cool stuff with lights there.

We also have, the main point of what we're gonna do is we're gonna stream live shows and we're going to be able to do video post-production.

So we're gonna have eight cameras around the room that will all video record bands and we'll stream three of 'em, the main three, we'll stream anybody's show and then after the show's done, we'll give them a copy of the stream.

And if they wanna expand, they're welcome to do so by negotiating with us to maybe do their whole show or maybe make a five minute demo video.

We also have a really nice sound system in there and so the sound quality is excellent which is a surprise because there's a lot of cement in the walls but we opted to use a lot of speakers, spread around the room at lower volumes so you don't have the echo that you might have if you just did the traditional front speakers.

And then in addition to the lights on stage, we also have the entire room set up with a computerized controlled lights.

I think I have 140 lights around the room that are set up so the whole room is nicely lit as well for creating a fun atmosphere for the audience to enjoy the band that they came to watch.

(bright upbeat music) I consider myself somewhere between semi-retired and self-employed.

And this opportunity looked like something that would be fun to do and I would, it would be interesting and exciting and it would keep me busy and I'd rather be busy than bored.

And it's something that I like because I'm gonna be around a lot of people and so I recommend to anybody to find something that you like to do and put your heart and soul into it and you can make it happen.

- Now to wrap this show up today, it's off to learn all about the local flower industry with Woodland Acre Flowers & Design.

Let's go see what they're all about.

(soft choral music) - I wouldn't say I was always attracted to flowers necessarily, but just nature in general.

I love to be outside.

So my whole childhood was spent playing in the woods behind our house, always exploring with our neighbor friends.

So I think just having a love for nature is what kinda sparked the interest.

And then I'm also an artist so I started out loving painting and drawing and anything relating to arts and crafts and that's kinda what led me to floristry, design and all of that.

(soft choral music) I started working for a couple of different local florists and flower farms just to kind of learn the ins and outs of the business and how to farm on a larger scale.

And that's when I kind of realized you know, "Hey, I could kind of start my own thing on the side, "still work a day job, do this as a part-time gig "for the starting out."

We started off small, we started off with just one plot and that's when we kind of realized this could really take off.

And we kept adding new plots, we built a greenhouse and it kinda just took off from there.

(soft choral music) I really love all flowers of course, but I love the spring flowers; the tulips.

Ranunculus is another flower that we grow.

Just because the anticipation of waiting for flowers for spring, we've gone all winter without having anything, so I would say the spring flowers are the most fun because it's just such an exciting time.

(soft choral music) The majority of what we grow are considered annuals, they're not perennials.

We do have a couple of sections of our farm with peonies and some other things that will come back every year that we don't have to maintain or pull out of the ground.

But the majority of everything we cut down to the ground and then we let the soil regenerate for the next year.

We'll add some amendments and things.

But then the dahlias, those all get dug up at the end of the season and then we store those in our basement through the winter and then we can separate those and plant even more the following year.

So we haven't gotten to a point of selling our dahlia tubers yet but we're getting to a point, we're starting to grow our stock enough to where we're gonna have the surplus.

So we may be offering those in the future.

(soft humming music) We have our hands in a lot of different things, we offer a flower share program, that's going on right now.

We've got our fall program going.

So we offer summer and fall, each program is six weeks long and customers will pay ahead of time and then they can pick up their flowers here every week for six weeks or we also offer delivery.

So that's one thing we do.

We also have a self-serve flower cart that we put out at the end of our driveway so that we stock with $15 bouquets.

It's a nice mix of whatever we have growing on the farm that week.

So we open that on Saturdays and Sundays and sometimes we'll open it an extra day if we have some extra flowers available.

And then I also, on my website, through the end of the growing season, about the end of October, we offer delivery services through our website.

You can go ahead and order an arrangement, we have a couple of different options for pricing and everything.

And it's designer's choice, it's whatever we have in season on the farm.

And then we offer a delivery to a 10-mile radius around our farm.

So it goes as far as I believe, I wanna say we have it as in Cuyahoga Falls North and then South North Canton.

And then we also do weddings and events.

So we pre-book, we're booked for this season but we do big weddings of all different sizes, colors, varieties.

That's one of my favorite things that we do.

And then we also offer smaller events like bridal showers, any kind of event where you need some arrangements on the tables.

And then another new thing we've been doing are the flower bar events.

So people can order the bulk flowers from us and then they set up a whole station at their bridal shower, a corporate event, anything really.

And people that come to your event can make a bouquet and take it as a gift to go home with.

So that's been really popular as well.

We do a lot, really anything that needs flowers.

We do funerals, really anything.

I mean, we're pretty open to a lot of different things.

(bright upbeat music) Everything that we make and sell was cut the day before as opposed to when you go to a traditional florist, they're shipping those flowers in from Columbia sometimes.

I mean, those things were cut three weeks ago.

So that's the beauty of what we do is that the flowers last so much longer.

I have customers tell me all the time, "You know I have that bouquet for almost three weeks."

And I can hardly believe that, I'm sure it wouldn't be as pretty to my standards.

But yeah, I mean, that's just the beauty of local flowers.

There's so much more variety that you can get too 'cause a lot of the flowers we grow like dahlia's for example, they don't ship well.

So you can't usually order those in from other countries because they're just more of a delicate flower and they don't have as long of a base life.

So yeah, there's just different varieties we've introduced people to that they may have never even heard of.

So that's what's really great too that you're introducing and educating people on what can be grown in your backyard here in Ohio.

I mean, people don't realize that Ohio has a great climate for growing.

So it's really opened a lot of possibilities for what we can grow around here in this climate.

(soft humming sound) I mean, there's always the occasional pests, the bugs, and we don't spray anything.

We're not certified organic but we do all organic practices on our farm.

We don't spray pesticides.

So I will say, yeah, the pests sometimes are a little disappointing but we've been able to manage them pretty well.

And then the groundhog issue, our first season we lost almost 300 sunflowers to groundhogs, so that was pretty sad.

But I'd say this time of year is when the burnout really sets in.

You know we're getting tired, we've been going through, we've had a lot of events this summer.

It's been a wonderful summer but just trying to push through to get through the end of the season.

We've got a lot of cleanups still ahead of us, so that would be probably the one thing that, you know you don't expect how much work it's gonna go into running a business.

So every year has been different and luckily, I have my husband who helps me with so many things behind the scenes.

So I can't imagine doing this alone, I will say.

I know other women that run their businesses all by themselves and it would be a lot to do by yourself.

So we're even getting to the point where we're considering staff maybe in the future, just hiring some farm help here and there 'cause that's the part that's getting overwhelming as well.

Just managing everything on top of the events and designing and so, I can't do everything forever.

(soft humming music) - Thank you for watching this episode of "Around Akron with Blue Green".

If you have any questions or comments, you can catch me on social media.

And thank you so much for making eight years of "Around Akron with Blue Green" possible.

I love you and have an amazing day.

(bright upbeat music) I just recorded everything and didn't have the camera on.

(laughs) Okay, take two.

(bright upbeat music) That's pretty good.

Yeah, I like it.

(bright upbeat music)