Mayor Don Plusquellic has scuttled plans for a cultural district in downtown Akron, Ohio, that would have included a new main library as well as the Akron Art Museum and Civic Theatre. Plusquellic announced April 28 that the ambitious scheme to combine the cultural institutions on a site with a 16-screen movie complex would be scaled back to include only the movie theatres.
The April 29 Akron Beacon Journal reported that the project was derailed over the difficulty of fitting all the buildings onto the six-acre site, as well as worries that the movie theatre would be too far from parking.
“It’s back to the drawing board,” said Library Director Steven Hawk. The library can now either expand its 30-year-old main or revisit an earlier plan to move to a downtown site between the former O’Neil’s department store and the Civic Theatre. Hawk said that plan “was never completely put to rest. It was just put on the back burner when the cultural district idea came up” last November.
Posted May 3, 1999.