Kent's New College Town Is Remaking the City by Joining It to Kent State

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(http://www.cleveland.com/) 55 Kent's new college town is remaking the city by comments joining it to Kent State University

(http://connect.cleveland.com/user/slitt/index.html) By Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer Print (http://connect.cleveland.com/user/slitt/posts.html) (http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture//print.html?Popular Topics 19 Follow on Twitter (https://twitter.com/steven_litt) entry=/2012/10/kents_new_college_town_is_rema.html) on October 12, 2012 at 4:00 PM, updated October 13, 2012 at 11:58 AM Tweet Tweet Public Square For decades, the downtown of 0 (http://topics.cleveland.com/tag/public- Kent, the small university town square/posts.html) Share on the Cuyahoga River 40 miles Cleveland Museum of 0 southeast of Cleveland, has had Art little to brag about. (http://www.cleveland.com/cma) Share Empty storefronts, blighted Regional Planning 0 (http://topics.cleveland.com/tag/northeast%20ohio%20sustainable%20communities%20consortium/index.html) buildings and dank alleys resembled crime scenes in the Reddit making. Active Discussions In the 1970s, a five-lane View full size (http://media.cleveland.com/architecture/photo/acornjpg- 6d823b65f8287ee6.jpg) limited-access parkway Steven Litt, The Plain Dealer Cleveland Cavaliers advance to 1 Eastern Conference Finals with total Developer Ron Burbick's newly completed Acorn Alley II is part of the new college town project emerging in Kent. team win, 94-73, over Chicago Bulls in Game 6 (http://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2015/05/cleveland_cavaliers_chicago_bu_15.html#incart_most- (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_State_Route_59) slashed across the fine- commented_architecture_article) grained downtown street grid, cutting off the central business district from the Kent (402 comments) State University campus, robbing town and gown of each other’s economic power. Kent Should the Boy Scouts of America ban became a dumpy automobile speed zone rather than a place to explore and savor on 2 openly gay scout masters? Editorial foot. The city moldered. Board Roundtable (http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/05/should_the_boy_scouts_of_ameri.html#incart_most- commented_architecture_article) If that’s your mental image of Kent, it’s time for another visit. Like other college and (168 comments) university towns across the country, Kent is transforming its downtown

(http://collegetownkent.com/) by leveraging a stronger link to its neighboring Bullpen, baserunning prevent back-to- institution of higher learning. KSU under President Lester Lefton is eagerly returning 3 back wins, as Cleveland Indians fall, 2- 1, to St. Louis Cardinals the embrace. (http://www.cleveland.com/tribe/index.ssf/2015/05/cleveland_indians_st_louis_car_6.html#incart_most- commented_architecture_article) It’s the latest regional example of a tsunami of campus-edge developments (426 comments) (http://cherrywood.org/archive/docs/44-UT_neighborhoods.pdf) that have swept American cities since the 1990s, when the University of Pennsylvania initiated a Amtrak and Congressional safety 4 oversight derail: Darcy cartoon makeover of its surroundings in West Philadelphia to create a more congenial (http://www.cleveland.com/darcy/index.ssf/2015/05/amtrak_derailment_darcy_cartoo.html#incart_most- environment that would attract and retain the best and brightest students and faculty. commented_architecture_article) (70 comments) The trend is being fueled by competition among academic institutions and by broad demographic shifts in which young people, retirees and others are moving from Rand Paul says George 5 Stephanopoulos shouldn't moderate suburbs into lively urban settings. debates: Rand Paul in the news (http://www.cleveland.com/rnc- In Cleveland, for example, the 2016/index.ssf/2015/05/rand_paul_says_george_stephano.html#incart_most- commented_architecture_article) $150 million-plus Uptown (82 comments) development

See more comments » (http://www.cleveland.com/interact/) View full size (http://media.cleveland.com/architecture/photo/mocauptownjpg- 56b0bfdd2a398b00.jpg) Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer The Uptown development in Cleveland last week saw the opening of the new Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland.

(http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/07/peter_b_lewis_donates_5_millio.html)has radically improved a former dead zone in University Circle through a partnership that includes Case Western Reserve University, University Circle Inc., the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and MRN Ltd., a private developer.

In Kent, a $106 million campus-edge development is well under way, and the results are dramatic. Blighted buildings have been removed, salvageable ones have been restored, and several blocks of offices, shops and restaurants are springing up.

A university-sponsored hotel, now under construction, is part of the mix, along with a federally funded parking garage and bus-transfer station that will include a bike livery. Fairmount Properties of Cleveland, one of the private development companies involved, will break ground in March on an apartment building.

The section of Ohio 59, aka Haymaker Parkway, that once severed downtown from KSU is no longer limited-access. Cars and trucks still speed along the street, but they’ll slow down in the near future as the city’s tattered street grid is rewoven with new pedestrian crosswalks and sections of the street are fitted with a new center-lane median that will calm traffic and beautify the area.

Just as important, KSU spent $8 million to acquire roughly 40 parcels in a dilapidated residential zone between its campus and the improving downtown — and without using eminent domain. The university is spending several million dollars more to extend a major cross-campus pedestrian esplanade through the area, across Haymaker, and straight into the heart of the new College Town Kent.

Next to one section of the extended esplanade, KSU will build its new $45 million College of Architecture and Environmental Design, which will become part of the new gateway to the campus. The university is conducting an international search

View full size (http://media.cleveland.com/architecture/photo/kentjpg- 4c63a955e045ea8f.jpg) U.S. DOT A version of the master plan for campus-edge project in Kent from 2010 shows the east-west Kent State University esplanade crossing the diagonal slash of Haymaker Parkway to join downtown Kent to KSU.

(http://blog.cleveland.com/architecture/2012/10/a_star- studded_list_of_archite.html)for a design team.

Among the 36 contenders are some of the biggest names in contemporary architecture, including Zaha Hadid, Thom Mayne, Farshid Moussavi and Eric Owen Moss. This is not business as usual for KSU, where most buildings put up since World War II are oppressively mediocre.

The $45 million for the architecture building comes on top of the city’s $106 million project, which means that the investment in the remaking of downtown Kent is already at $150 million and counting.

The upshot of all this should be a terrific improvement in the image of the city and the university, still widely known for the National Guard shootings of four students there in 1970 during the Vietnam War.

As for the positive economic and fiscal impact, city officials say it will be substantial. Taxes for local schools from property within the project will jump from $39,000 to $215,000. The downtown project has created 950 construction jobs and is expected to generate or retain another 700, many of them good-paying office jobs.

A pair of new three-story office and retail buildings, just finished by Fairmount Properties, includes offices for the Davey Tree Resource Group, plus the headquarters of Ametek, a manufacturer of electric motors and electronic instruments.

Ametek vice president and general manager Matt French said that, without the project, his company would very likely have left Northeast Ohio.

The offices in Fairmount’s new Water and West Erie buildings, as they’re called, are located directly above new, locally owned shops and restaurants where employees and KSU students can mingle, hang out and take a break.

The offerings include Newdle Bar, an Asian-themed eatery, and Insomnia Cookies, which, as its website states, offers "cookie delivery UNTIL 3 a.m.!" to cure the munchies for KSU students pulling all-nighters.

The architecture of the new buildings in the Fairmount portion of the development, called College Town Kent, is intended to blend with existing 19th- and early 20th- century storefront buildings in downtown Kent rather than call attention to itself. Fairmount principal Randy Ruttenberg said the goal was to leave the impression that the new buildings have always been part of downtown Kent.

That may disappoint observers who might have preferred something more dramatic. But what matters most is the urban design of the development. Fairmount’s buildings have retail spaces with soaring 18-foot-high ceilings that make the interiors feel welcoming and expansive.

Sidewalks throughout the development are wide enough to accommodate cafe tables and chairs. Developer Ron Burbick’s Acorn Alley I and II retail and office complexes flank cozy alleys and interior courtyards with outdoor tables and chairs that invite sunning and dining.

The biggest move of all is the extension of the KSU esplanade, which should pour a steady stream of customers from the university’s 27,700-student campus into downtown’s new shops and restaurants.

The Kent project would not be happening if not for smart, creative and carefully aimed investment by government at the local, county, state and federal levels over the past half-dozen years. In all, a $40 million government investment has so far attracted more than $60 million from private developers — with more to come.

"This is not the end point, it’s a beginning," said Kent City Manager Dave Ruller.

U.S. Rep. Timothy Ryan provided a crucial jump-start through federal earmarks in the six figures that paid for early planning studies, which led to letters of intent binding developers to invest in downtown if the project moved forward.

The Obama administration awarded the Portage Area Regional Transportation Authority $20 million to pay for the parking garage and bus-transfer station — another key element of the downtown project. The money came in 2010 as part of the stimulus program (http://www.fta.dot.gov/12297_11827.html) aimed at fighting the recession, through the nation’s first Federal Transportation Administration TIGER grant, short for Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery. It was the first such grant signed (http://www.fta.dot.gov/12297_11827.html)by U.S. Transportation Secretary Raymond LaHood.

"It dramatically changed the economics" of the downtown project, Ruller said.

The development looks like a shining success for Ohio and an example well worth emulating. It also raises the important question of what would have happened to the city without the earmarks for planning and the federal grant for the garage. The project might have happened, Ruller said, but it would have faced far steeper obstacles and taken far longer.

In many ways, the infusion of government money in downtown Kent is an attempt to heal the damage caused by four decades of sprawl across Northeast Ohio that was unleashed by earlier federal investments in the interstate highway system. As new subdivisions and shopping centers popped up along freeway exits, older downtowns emptied out.

Retrofitting blighted downtowns to encourage compact and economically efficient development makes excellent sense at a time when gas prices are rising and the market is demanding alternatives to the spread-out, automobile-centered lifestyles encouraged by the interstates.

Kent's downtown revival is doing more than boosting the city’s livability and attractiveness. It’s showing how Northeast Ohio can remold its communities to create a smarter, greener, more economically productive future.

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()jr Oct 20, 2012 Great article and great to see this happening in Kent. I can't wait to visit and take a look myself.

()JRid Oct 12, 2012 As a native Kentite, it's exciting to see this all coming together after years and years of talk and inaction. Few things: 1. "College Town Kent" is the formal name of the Fairmount development. Acorn Alley, the KSU Hotel, the PARTA garage, and the Esplanade Extension are all separate projects. They are not part of College Town Kent. The collegetownkent.com website clearly has a Fairmount logo on it and links to Fairmount Properties. 2. Historically, downtown Kent was already in decline by the time Haymaker Parkway opened in 1975. A huge ﬁre eliminated an entire block of businesses in 1972 and suburban sprawl was in full swing with shoppers gravitating to shopping centers and malls. Even without Haymaker Parkway, downtown would've likely still gone into the deep decline it did. Also, Haymaker Parkway is hardly some inaccessible barrier between campus and downtown. It's a 5-lane road that is rather easy to cross. Problem wasn't so much a matter of people not being able to get to downtown as it was not having anything to attract them there. 3. The total enrollment of KSU's main campus in Kent is 28,806. The 27,700 number comes from the "unduplicated" count, meaning students who have classes at Kent but take the majority of their classes at one of the regional campuses are not counted at all in the campus total.

()prodd Oct 12, 2012 That's an awesome Master Plan image. The one that would let me envision where this actually is. However, when I click to see the full-sized version, the ﬁle is saved so small that I can't read anything on it, including street names.

()Benjamin Oct 21, 2012 You can try one of these links for bigger versions of the Master Plan: http://www.kentcentralgateway.com/Images/PDFs/Downtown-Kent-Redevelopment.pdf http://www.kentcentralgateway.com/Images/August_Images/Site%20Plan%20Rendering.pdf I started attending Kent State in 2009, and moved here in 2010. It's been wonderful to see the changes in downtown in my time here.

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