Resident questions building planning in Akron
To the editor:
In Akron, there is room for landmarks and schools. Let Portage Path Community Learning Center (CLC) have a different site, and let the Highland Theater stay where it is. It seems more than a coincidence that the owner suddenly asked to demolish the theater just when a proposed school is looking for parking space. Have businesses suffered a loss while the building project in Highland Square is going on across Market Street?
Why not make the place that is being used as a temporary school next to the McDonald’s on Market Street into a permanent school? That building is large, and McDonald’s is much less of a landmark than the Highland Theater. The temporary school building is part of the neighborhood already, not far away. A downtown office building could be used as a temporary school instead; the mayor claims that downtown is underutilized.
Highland Square children are waiting until a CLC is completed somewhere else to have their school built. Why was the Judith Resnik CLC chosen as the first school to be built, if the Portage Path school has asbestos and is much older than the Fairlawn school that was torn down? And why does the 2005 price affect the size of a proposed building? Does this mean the Fairlawn CLC now has all its amenities while the other schools must have their amenities cut, again putting more services into the richer neighborhood? The delay in building is not because a neighborhood wants to keep its landmarks.
Must we concentrate all our historic landmarks in the downtown area? The Highland Theater is a beautiful building inside, comparable to the Civic Theater, and is one of the few places where community theater may occur. I remember seeing a concert by Arlo Guthrie there, for example. The Highland Theater is one of the main draws for the restaurants and boutiques in the neighborhood.
I have little confidence in building planning in Akron. The new main library downtown is without free parking, on a hilly site that is difficult for the disabled, and had to throw away shelves of books to fit into its new site. Before the new site was built, a temporary site at the former DIY on Tallmadge Avenue (now the Bureau of Motor Vehicles) provided free, convenient parking, one-floor disabled-accessible shelves, and plenty of space for all the books; downtown had the space to build a structure like that. For the price of the new main library alone, all the new schools could have been built.
Elizabeth Dowling, West Hill
Editor’s note: At a community meeting at Portage Path School of Technology Jan. 31, Akron Public Schools Superintendent Sylvester Small said the temporary school location at 400 W. Market St. (near McDonald’s) will not be available until 2014, which is too long to wait to construct the Portage Path CLC. City and school officials also said it is important to keep the Portage Path CLC in the Highland Square neighborhood.
Additionally, the cost of the CLC building project is about $800 million, while the new Akron-Summit County Main Library Branch cost $57 million to build.
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