09/30/2026
How do you heal a physical scar cut into a city 50 years ago?
In the 1970s, Akron constructed the Innerbelt (Route 59)—a highway trench cut straight through the vibrant, predominantly Black neighborhood of Opportunity Park. The project bulldozed more than 700 homes, displaced thousands of families, shuttered community businesses, and physically severed West Akron from downtown.
The cruelest irony? The highway was never even finished. For decades, it sat mostly empty—a concrete trench that divided a community without delivering on its promises.
Today, Akron is doing something extraordinary: choosing to heal.
Through the Innerbelt Master Plan and the federal Reconnecting Communities initiative, the city decommissioned the northern stretch of the freeway. Instead of speeding cars through a trench, Akron is actively listening to former residents and descendants, reconnecting street grids, and transforming former asphalt into greenways, public parks, and neighborhood-centered infill.
You can never undo the displacement of a community. But by tearing out the highway and restoring the urban grid, Akron is taking deliberate steps toward generational repair.
