Great Streets Initiative

Promoting economic and urban development in neighborhood business districts through comprehensive corridor planning, incentive programs, and public management reforms

Great Streets Akron

Geography

Eleven neighborhood business districts

Sponsoring Institution

City of Akron: Mayor’s Office, Office of Integrated Development

Key Milestones

2017

Akron voters enact quarter-percent income tax increase to pay for road repairs, public service, and emergency services, with $4 million earmarked for road repairs and public service.

2018

The city of Akron launches the Great Streets Initiative, conducts business and community engagement to identify community needs, and begins the first round of the façade grant program.

2019

The city launches the second round of the façade grant program.

Financial Implications

Repurposed existing federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) of $600,000 to concentrate on façade improvements within eleven business districts over a two-year period
Awarded up to $30,000 to more than 20 individual façade improvement grant recipients
Avoided increasing municipal operating budgets or capital budgets by prioritizing ongoing street redesign within the business districts to maximize efficiency of public services.
Increased municipal income taxes by 0.25 percent to fund repaving both within the corridors and elsewhere

Select Models Goals

Expand strategic and comprehensive urban planning
Reestablish neighborhood business districts as active community hubs
Improve civic capacity and transcend public sector silos
Improve aesthetics, urban design, and public space

Implementation: Model Design

Public management reforms included restructuring reporting structures to bring together the Planning and Economic Development departments as well as the Public Works department to align their capacities in pursuit of a shared revitalization strategy.
The initiative concentrates the ongoing business of the city (e.g., street redesign, bike lanes and pedestrian infrastructure, resurfacing, plowing, street trees, streetlight improvements) for significant and visible change in all eleven corridors without significant additional capital investment in all corridors.

Key Innovations

The initiative is notable for putting into practice many of the strategies understood by experts to be effective for legacy cities. Neighborhood strategies are tailored to local market conditions and build on the unique historic and local characteristics. It also leverages existing federal CDBG funding to strengthen the urban core while engaging more deeply with community residents and businesses.

As the primary pilot project for the city’s new Office of Integrated Development, the Great Streets Initiative demonstrates how comprehensive and strategic planning can be implemented incrementally in a city with significantly constrained public capacity.

The approach reflects an awareness that Akron neighborhoods compete for the region’s residents, who select neighborhoods in which to live, work, and shop.

Staffing and/or CapacityThe city’s chief of staff also became the deputy mayor for integrated development. Both planning and economic development staff now work together in the new Office of Integrated Development.