'It's caught on fire twice': Akron pursues $12 million plan to demolish blighted buildings

Akron city officials are pursuing state funding to demolish a handful of large commercial buildings and more than 100 blighted homes while hoping to use local income taxes from the community learning center (CLC) project to tear down crumbling schools.

With approval this month from City Council, Mayor Dan Horrigan’s planning and development staff will ask the Ohio Department of Development for $9 million. The money, along with a $3 million local match, would fund the demolition of five commercial structures out of the dozens on the city's Vacant Building Registry.

Whatever remains would be put toward a list of 193 condemned homes, mostly in lower-income neighborhoods where the city has aggressively spent limited funds on demolition since 2010.

The five commercial properties include iconic Akron institutions: the Morley Health Center, which the city has struggled to repurpose; the Firestone Building, the largest tire factory in Akron when it was completed in 1910; the Word Church on Manchester Road, once the largest megachurch in America (Akron Baptist Temple) and a pioneer in radio and television evangelism; and two former school properties.

The school properties – Rankin Elementary in West Akron and an old vocational training facility in Summit Lake – illustrate a larger problem for Akron. As Akron Public Schools has built anew, someone has to maintain or demolish smaller, mothballed schools that can drive blight in residential neighborhoods.

State law allows schools to swap land of equal value with cities and counties, which is how Akron acquired the Kenmore Annex in Summit Lake. Beyond a swap, state law limits the sale of public assets, which must first be offered to charter schools before going to public auction. The school district isn’t allowed to vet buyers.

That’s what happened to Rankin Elementary. A private buyer, Leroy Stowers, bought Rankin at auction in 2019, as well as Lawndale and Smith elementary schools. The three schools sat empty, eventually catching fire or crumbling. The same is happening to other auctioned-off schools, according to council members.

The city imposes demolition orders due to their deteriorating conditions. But private owners often can’t afford the property taxes, let alone around $500,000 per demolition.

So, the city is left holding the bag, like when it was forced to demolish the Rubber Bowl using taxpayer funds after the University of Akron sold the stadium for $38,000 in 2013 to private developers with overblown dreams of creating a music venue or a Minor Football League franchise.

Demolishing privately owned buildings with public funds

Horrigan's administration created the Vacant Building Registry to deal with large and empty commercial properties. Rankin was added in May 2021.

The school is now among dozens of condemned buildings the city can’t afford — or hasn’t budgeted local resources — to tear down. As Director of Integrated Development Sean Vollman recently told City Council, “Ordering something to be demolished and having the funds to do it are two different things."

In all, seven of the 10 schools APS has sold at auction for a combined $638,550 have been torn down or ordered to be demolished. Five of the buildings have a combined tax delinquency of $800,000, which will grow by $550,000 when demolition costs are added to the property record for Smith Elementary.

The former school in Kenmore was the latest to meet the wrecking ball. After catching fire a year earlier, police called the city of Akron in June when an exterior wall fell onto the sidewalk and into the street.

“Collapse was imminent. They contacted the owner to no avail,” Public Service Director Chris Ludle told City Council this month as he asked for permission to pay the contractor, who already bulldozed the school.

Lawndale, also owned by Stowers, saw a similar fate when it was demolished in January 2022 after catching on fire.

The bill was $550,000 for demolition of Smith Elementary. Council members asked if the city and its taxpayers would ever see that money again.

“This dollar amount will go on the taxes of this property. And we will try to recoup this at some point. It’s just like an assessment that’s put on the property,” said Ludle.

“So, we’re not going to retain the property?” Ward 5 Councilwoman Tara Mosley asked. “We’re actually going to let [Stowers] keep the property and hope that he’s going to pay for the demolition cost?”

“Well, that’ll be up to the county to go ahead and take the property,” Ludle said.

Vacant Building Registry: Akron keeps tabs on vacant buildings

The city may be a lien holder on the debt. But it’s the Summit County Fiscal Office that would initiate a foreclosure case, forcing the property owner to settle his tax bill or lose his property at sheriff’s sale.

"He’s already $42,000 in arrears on the taxes. Now this is going to add another $550,000,” Ludle said.

That is in addition to the $90,668 Stowers owes in back taxes on Rankin, which will cost an estimated $1 million to demolish, and the $448,353 owed on Lawndale, which already includes the demolition cost.

Stowers could soon owe more than $2 million if he wants to redeem his properties. The alternative would be to let L. Stowers Community Development, the limited liability company that legally owns the schools, absorb the loss without impacting him personally.

Reached by phone, Stowers wouldn’t discuss the situation.

“Everybody is calling me about the negative, about the purchases of the schools, but nobody called me for results on what we can do to move forward and make any [plans for the] schools work,” he said. “But I'm gonna give you the real story once this is all said and done, I promise you.”

Can city use building funds to tear down old schools?

Butcher & Sons Landscaping LLC charged $550,000 to demolish Smith.

It’s a small company, Ludle said. So, council suspended its rules to expedite the payment.

Some, however, wondered how the city is paying a bill the private owner isn't in a position to repay.

“We’re looking to use the leftover school money,” Ludle said of $16 million remaining in a joint city-school account fed by a 1/4 percent income tax that funded the CLC school construction project. “But I can’t tell you that we are going to be successful in doing that.”

The concern, as former school board member and current At-Large Councilwoman Linda Omobien pointed out, is that the income tax levy, which is mostly paid by people who do not live in Akron, was for the improvement or construction of schools — not to tear them down.

“When we asked the public to support the levy for those dollars, they were for CLCs," Omobien said. "And I don’t know that we can use them for anything else."

The school district is planning to use its half of the leftover $16 million to pay down debt as the need for new schools remains in Kenmore and North, which did not get new high schools in the CLC project.

Some council members say more schools should be demolished

To be eligible for the $500 million in demolition funds the state has made available upon request, a property must be city-owed, or the city must have the right to demolish it after imposing a nuisance code violation, which is the case for Rankin.

Private entities, like the owners of the Word Church, can apply for the state funds through the Summit County Land Bank.

Council members say they’ve got empty schools and commercial properties attracting unwanted attention and criminal or unsafe activity.

“Goodrich [Middle School] should be on this list as well, because it’s just as dangerous,” Mosley said of the junior high school she attended in East Akron. “It’s caught on fire twice. They continue to board it up, and the squatters keep going in there.”

That building was purchased by former Akron City Council members Ernie Tarle and Zack Milkovich, who gifted the school, without paying the outstanding water bill, to an activist who tried but has failed to repurpose the building as a community center.

“Hotchkiss School catches on fire regularly. So, if we’re making a list of buildings to look at for demo, I would love to add that one to the list,” Ward 10 Councilwoman Sharon Connor said.

There are no back taxes on Hotchkiss, unlike other schools sold at auction. Developer Tony Jaber bought the school for $45,100. He said there were issues prior to boarding it up. He’s since signed a land contract, which he said is filed with the county, for Hassan Anderson to use the building.

Anderson, who runs a nonprofit, is optimistic that he could repurpose the old school for the betterment of the community, reactivating the gymnasium and providing after-school activities to positively impact youth.

“It's not concrete,” Anderson said of the possibilities. “But I do run a nonprofit organization currently. So obviously, any help with buildings like those, you look for city support. But right now, I don't have a comment on the future plans. We're just cleaning it out and trying to maintain it from littering and dumping and fires and things of that nature.”

Reach reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Akron pursues $12 million plans to demolish vacant buildings