Akron wants to grow from 198,000 residents to 250,000 by 2050: Here's how
By Email the author | Follow on Twitter
on February 06, 2017 at 2:06 PM, updated February 06, 2017 at 2:07 PM
AKRON, Ohio -- Akron wants to buck the trend of "shrinking Rust Belt city," with a plan to build new homes and renovate downtown office buildings to boost the population to 250,000 by 2050.
"A shrinking cities model of mothballing infrastructure and relocating residents will not serve us well," Director of Planning & Urban Development Jason Segedywrites in the Planning to Grow Akron report released Tuesday. "Instead of putting precious time, energy, and money into shrinking, let's build on our neighborhood assets, and figure out how to grow again."
Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan spoke to cleveland.com in January about creating a residential tax abatement to lure new construction in the city of 198,000.
Akron plans to offer a city-wide residential tax abatement program to spur new development. Details will be included in a housing report coming next month.
But the plan goes way beyond that. Among the report's recommended strategies are:
- implementing city-wide residential property tax abatement on new housing development and rehabilitation
- crafting neighborhood-based plans with community input
- promoting downtown housing as an alternative to vacant office space
- increasing the utilization of the Summit County Land Bank for targeted acquisition and demolition
- modernizing the zoning code to encourage mixed-use development
- expediting the permitting process
- increasing the identification and marketing of historic areas and community assets to spur economic development.
The strategies are intended to attract middle-income residents but benefit all Akronites, Horrigan stated in the release.
City officials hope to raise property values, draw more students to the University of Akron and and diffuse the cost of public improvements by spreading them out across a larger residential base.
"Akron has valuable housing stock, quality infrastructure, and first-class amenities; but, like many urban communities, over the last several decades we have lost families to newer housing in the suburbs," Horrigan said in a news release. "Its time for us to be intentional about welcoming residents back into Akron by incentivizing private developers to rehabilitate existing housing and build new housing in the city that families want to live in."
The city said Planning to Grow Akron will work with a Market Value Analysis being developed by the Reinvestment Fund and the Build in Akron report being prepared by the Greater Ohio Policy Center, both of which are expected out in the next couple months.
Have you read the report? What do you think?
Want more Akron news? Sign up for cleveland.com's Rubber City Daily newsletter, which delivers the city's top 10 news stories to your email at 5:30 a.m. Monday-Friday.
No comments:
Post a Comment